Marybird

Ways in which I Embarrass Myself

2010-08-12T12:56:00.002-05:00

I have a million and a half of these stories. I collect them the way my grandpa collected Zippos and pencils (that is to say, my stories are very disorganized and sitting in a shoebox in a hallway closet in Iowa). I like to think of them now and again, and get all re-embarrassed a week, a month, ten years after the fact. Today, I have a fresh one to add to my collection.

So today’s installment has to do with appropriate use of office space. The story began last night, when I decided to wait until 9 p.m. to my laundry, even though I knew I had to air dry 50 percent of it. I fished the clothes out of the washer, and hung them up in my air-conditioning–free living room on what was shaping up to be a very humid evening, and pointed a fan directly at them to speed up drying.

This morning, I mistook “really really hot” for “dry” (it was probably 88 degrees in my place at that point) and folded and packed the clothes to take to work. (Doesn’t everyone take their laundry to work? No? Just me? Okay then.) Once at the office, I opened my bag to fish out my phone and a horrible smell hit me—a combination of souring curry (my lunch) and old attic (my now-musty, apparently not-quite-dry laundry). I shook out the clothes—a dress, a few tank tops, and some underwear—and draped them over various surfaces and work spaces to dry, thinking all the while “I hope no one stops by my office today.”

Now, generally speaking, no one does stop by. Ever. I could go weeks at work without uttering a word to anyone; we’re not big on socialization or speaking face to face. Even “good morning” in the hallway seems frowned upon. My morning passed smoothly and people-free, and after a few hours, I went to the kitchen to take care of my gigantic heap of dirty dishes (I swear, I’m amazed people don’t think I’m squatting in the building, what with the amount of dishes, foodstuffs, spare shoes, toothbrush, decorations, and now, airing laundry that I keep around the place).

So there I am, cleaning out 8-day-old dried coffee crud from a mug when a senior editor spots me and wants to talk about a project. My hands are heaped with dishes, so what do I do? Do I put them down on the counter and dry my hands? No. I invite him back to my office. Shit. It wasn’t until we were approaching the door that I realized what I had done, but my hands were running with castoff dishwater and I couldn’t very well say “never mind, let’s not go in there.” So in we went. He sat down and brushed my tanks off the chair without even a second thought. Uh, okay. This gave me hope. This man is very sweet and seems to live in his own head a lot, so I figured he may not notice the Hooverville quality that my office had taken on.

And then he looked down at his feet.

Down at his feet, where 6 inches away, a bag was draped with 6 pairs of drying panties of all shapes, colors, and, uh, purposes.

I wanted to die.

I give this editor credit for glancing, looking away, stuttering only a wee bit, then continuing on with our conversation on author charges for changes to proofs. After that, he stared at the ceiling a lot. Bless him. After he left, I shoved the offending laundry, still wet, back in my bag, figuring musty panties were easier to overcome than embarrassment. Of course, now that I’ve done this, no one from the office will ever darken my door again, because that’s just the way it works.

I had no idea Kissin could cause such a ladyfrenzy.

2009-11-05T13:16:00.004-06:00

Every once in a while, I like to do a key word round-up, to see what drives people to ol' marybird.blogspot.com. Somehow, I tend not to believe it's my sparkling wit...and today, Google Analytics agrees with me! People do not visit me to giggle; they visit me because when they're trying to figure out if Evgeny Kissin is married, this is where they land! I had no idea that so many ladies were asking that question... Ah, sigh. (That's a good, lusty sigh, guys, not a lame, bored one, just so you know.)

And here's your key word round-up!

13. Yevgeny Kissin married
12. why is Hershey backwards <------ ???
11. Natalie Dee "t shirt model"
10. Evgeny Kissin's marriage
09. Evgeny Kissin marriage status
08. Evgeny Kissin birthday
07. Evgeny Kissin awkward <------aw, boo :(
06. Evgeny Kissin married?
05. "Evgeny Kissin" married
04. marybird + kissin <------- "sittin' in a tree..."
03. is Evgeny Kissin married
02. Evgeny Kissin marriage
01. Evgeny Kissin married

So....I think we can probably all agree that it's time for me to stop this blog and just officially start a Evgeny Kissin newsletter/marriagewatch Web site.

Yelp nice, y'all.

2009-11-05T11:12:00.004-06:00

I love Yelp. I'm a lopsided player...I totally use them for reviews and suggestions without giving much back (I try...but my dear T. usually beats me to the punch; he's much better at reviewing in a timely fashion than I am).

During a rare moment of reviewiness a few weeks ago, I posted my thoughts on a Hyde Park establishment, giving it a fair--but not great--rating. Much to my surprise, this elicited a response from the owner, wherin he corrected some of the assumptions set forth in my review and invited me back anytime. Later, I came to find from C., master Yelper that she is, that it's relatively common for owners to reach out to reviewers and ask them to have a change of heart...or at least star number.

Well, that's officially out of control: Slog posted this story today about a batshit-crazy bookstore owner who was so angry that some anonymous Yelper called her store dirty, that she took matters into her own hands (shame she didn't also take her meds). SF Weekly also has the story.

The sick part of this is that now I want to go around leaving bad reviews left and right, just to see if I can elicit this sort of response...just short of the "hunting me down and attacking me" bit.

National Day on Writing

2009-10-21T21:24:00.006-05:00

I guess maybe it served as some sort of preparation for National Novel Month (which, just so you know, is happening rightaboutnow), you know, a quick exercise to get everyone in the mood to write, but October 20 was the National Day on Writing (my apologies for this weirdly dated post...I started it on the 20th. Guess where this is going...writing, or not...or, oh hell). My mom (who is the least writerly gal I know) brought it to my attention, and I thought, excellent! I shall write!

But I didn't.

I sat down to write a few weeks ago, but I think I was too excited, and all my ideas jammed up at my fingertips and nothing would come out (well, that's not exactly true--nothing good [at all] came out). I hate how I have all these ideas in my head. They constantly play like 7-second movies. I can see it all--how it builds up, who the characters are, what their stories are, how it ends--but I can't move it from my brain to paper. It just moves to quickly and I don't have a chance to capture it. Was it Beethoven who composed in his head or Mozart? Probably both, the genius-y bastards. That's definitely not me.

When I was 20, I grasped onto every story I read about someone who wrote their smash hit bestselling novel at the age of 26, thinking, thank god, there's still time for me. (Of course, I thought that those who were only just getting published at 30 were ancients who had wasted their best years and ideas and were now somehow just getting pity contracts [not that I'd mind one of those].) When I was 25, I was more keyed in to the publishing-at-30 crowd. Now, I'm looking toward Audrey Neffeneger and others whose first megasuccess came in their 40s and am whimpering, pleeeease? me? pleeeease? i want one of those.

I've taken to scribbling lots of notes recently in the hopes that one will be the sentence that kicks of the thought that forms the idea that becomes the basis for a sustainable story line.

Hasn't happened yet.

I do recall writing a rather lovely sentence about coffee when I was 18, thinking that it would be THAT sentence. It wasn't. I still remember it, though. Sigh. It's like a really good outfit that you visualize as you're falling asleep, and when you put it on the morning it looks all wrong, but you go out and wear it anyway and look foolish and feel a little too self-conscious for comfort.

Anyway, I'm losing the plot:

National Day on Writing, a day I was so into observing that it's taken me over 2 weeks to actually finish this blog post.

And to sum up, what did I write on this auspicious day?
Nothing. I simply copied down a direct quote from a coworker:

"He's all affectation."

On the plus side, I feel like I can own this phrase: last week I went upstairs to drop off some papers, and noticed a coworker laying on the floor of his office, chin propped on hands like a little kid reading in bed, as he proofed our catalogue. My first thought was, from his natty tweed suit over his ironic Tee to his chunky glasses and shaved head, that dude is all affectation.

Yeah...that'll work. Tale of a dating fail.

2009-10-14T09:55:00.002-05:00

I feel bad for this guy. For three years, he's been mulling over how best to approach the woman of his dreams. He's had 1,000 days, give or take a few, to come up with a workable plan to get this lovely lady to notice him. And what does he come up with? Craigslist Missed Connections. Fail.

(Thanks to the guys over at Emails from Crazy People for posting this gem in the first place and in general for making my morning coffee taste schiz-ier.)

FINALLY, Steve came through!

2009-10-06T10:32:00.002-05:00

I've been very annoyed for the last six months or so when two of my favorite bloggers, Natalie Dee and Steve from The Sneeze, got lives of their own and slowed down on their blogginess. How dare they? Don't they know that I need to be entertained every moment of every day? It was devastating.

Natalie and Steve both started up again a few weeks ago, much to my delight, as by then I'd thoroughly exhausted their archives...for the third time. But this morning, I was still feeling a little ping of sadness. My favorite time of year--Tree Brain Time!--had come and gone without a peep from Steve. How could he leave me in the lurch? How mean! Boo to the lack of Tree Brain, I thought. And then, this morning, a delightful Tuesday present: A Tree Brain Update! Thank you Steve, for not being a slacker about this. I was seriously about to cry. But now, we can all revel in the glory of the Tree Brain (and hate on the weird weather, which I am holding personally responsible for the delay).

Either my sticker is on backwards, or Hershey knows me well.

2009-05-04T13:03:00.002-05:00

I recently purchased one of those----

Ok, stop, stop it right there.

I was trying to come up with a clever story about a boring topic when I had to abandon that pursuit and go to a meeting, where the following conversation took place:

[boss is overheard telling coworker to hit herself in the head with a flounder. We won't even go into why that just might have been sound advice.]

Coworker #1: "I don't want to hit myself in the head with a flounder."
Coworker #2: "I'll hit you in the head with a flounder."
Coworker #3: "Or with a bigger fish, but for the halibut."

[About half the table starts laughing, and someone acutally does the "ba-dum-shh" rimshot.]

Coworker #5: "Ok, stop it everyone. All this laughing is giving me a haddock."
Coworker #6: [whispers to me] "I'm really embarrassed that I work here.

You and me both, lady.

Fashion crisis solved.

2009-02-04T18:15:00.003-06:00

You know what? I don't even care if Natalie Dee isn't breaking down my door, begging me to model her shirts (which, p.s., she totally should be doing, but whatevs). Because I've moved on. "What should I wear to work today?" is a question I no longer have to ask myself, now that I've ordered a whole mess of these:

The collection is stunning, really, and so versatile. I'm thinking now that I'll be wearing the "ex-hypocrite" shirt to work, and maybe the "ex-slave," if I'm feeling cheeky, whereas "ex-masturbator" really sends the right message for Saturday night drinks with the gals.

And naturally, my entire family will be getting these for Christmas this year. I mean, duh.

The last photos of the day

2009-01-30T09:27:00.012-06:00

My original New Year's resolution was to stick with my photo-a-day project and really get cracking with it. As of the 6th, when I think I'd taken 1 picture so far, I revised the resolution to be "fuck it. Stop being so vain." This revised resolution fits in well with my general boringness and laziness, and spares you all, as well. So here are some final photos. Hold your breath and close your eyes: it'll all be over soon.

19 December 2008. It took me 2 hours to get ready for this party, and I look exactly the same as I do when I spend 5 minutes getting ready for work. Hum.

23 December 2008. I gave Thong a Spider Man sticker for Christmas. That's how awesome I am.

24 December 2008. This is pretty much what I did for the whole of the time I was home for Christmas. My parents have very comfy chairs.

25 December 2008. Maddie makes my Christmas greetings cuter.

26 December 2008. Helping Megan put some muscle into her dough-rolling.

27 December 2008. Mom and I think Maddie is endlessly fascinating. Abby is not so impressed.

31 December 2008. As of this moment, I still have the best of intentions for my photo project for 2009. Happy New Year!

Why Ling Bai had to resign as my guru/hero.

2009-01-30T09:20:00.002-06:00

It was all well and good when you pulled up her blog and it said "hello" on the tab bar, but now? It says "naked seduction." If my guru is NSFW, she can be my guru no longer. Sadly, I had to call for her resignation. Here's what she had to say for herself:

Yes its true this is what I do this is what I do the best to seduce you with the nakedness naked emotion naked heart naked mind and naked confession naked naked soul and naked compassion I seduce you with the pure naked me and my naked love I seduce you like a woman I seduce you like your best friend I seduce you like you I seduce you with the distance only on the other side of the computer....... Seduce with the nakedness with danger........ I am your mirror only reflects you....... 永恒的诱惑和爱心

So, I guess that's that, then. Bye-bye, Bai. I'll miss you.

Idea leftovers.

2009-01-30T09:11:00.004-06:00

Don't you hate it when something pops into your head, and you think, god, I'm the awesomest person ever for (a) imagining that daydream; (b) inventing the next "Snuggie" (c) crafting the outline for the world's next internationally best-selling novel!

And then you realize that, in fact, all you've done is only slightly reimagined, say, the plot of an old episode of "Blossom" or changed the color of the Snuggie or some shit like that. I hate that. It's like you get to feel original for 2 seconds before you're cruelly reminded that, nope, you're totally average. Sweet.

So then, even though I hate it when I do this to myself, I love spotting it when others do it...especially when it's something I deemed douchey in the first place. Let's take, for example, a book that came out around the time I was interning in Boston. The Press I was working (for free) at released this exciting title. It was a big'un. It got a table at the local Barnes & Noble, even:

Mmmmmm, yeah. I remember there being all sorts of awesome and punky tips for working out, like, don't use weights, use bottles of sand! Use bricks! No--use bricks with graffiti...so much badasser. Don't wear pants--just wear 5 pairs of tights and a headband as a skirt. Oooh, grrrrrrl, now you're ready for some punk fitness, bitch!

I'm so, so glad that not even four years later, the idea has grown up and repackaged itself, planted itself into someone else's brain, who then turned around and gave us the all-new, original...

I'm not even going to bother... Amelie over at The Hater does a much better job making fun of this than I will.

Pride & Prejudice

2008-12-09T18:08:00.002-06:00

Haven't read it yet?
Can't face the thought of sitting through a movie based on it?
Then read this, instead:

Get the full scoop, and shiver with glee, here.

*sighimsohappyrightnow*

Photos of the day.

2008-11-30T11:45:00.011-06:00

19 November 2008. Although I really really wanted to take advantage of my office's closed-door policy by doing a handstand, this is as far as I could get...

20 November 2008. Mary takes a sick day. Tesser sits by patiently.

21 November 2008. Oh, look, a different place to crochet.

24 November 2008. Thong is not respecting my orange-and-red dress code. We have to have a talk about that.

25 November 2008. This bed is not for sleeping. It's just for staring at.

26 November 2008. Abby seems unaware that she's 14. I seem unaware that Abby is a dog.

27 November 2008. Piano was awesomer when my ass didn't take up the entire bench.

28 November 2008. Unlike my bed, this chair is for sleeping. And that little table is for holding the work that I should have been doing.

Photos of the day.

2008-11-13T14:27:00.006-06:00

7 November 2008. "So wait--Kate, wait! It says here that you're not supposed to use the same spoon to cook with that you use to beat children. Here, use this one, instead."

11 November 2008. The face of someone who is thinking "fuck this stupid project. Here's my damn photo of the day. Fuck you."

13 November 2008. 9am, break #3. It's just that kind of a day.

Think before you speak.

2008-11-13T14:04:00.002-06:00

It may be a little unfair of me to type that sentence in the subject line, since it is well known that I stick my foot in my mouth at almost every turn (my favorite story is a one-two punch: I accidentally called someone a slut once in a roundabout way, and then, a year later, when relating the story to a new friend [and ending with something like "seriously, though, she was a huge slut"], I wound up insulting the second girl, too, in exactly the same manner).

I'm sure people wonder about me when I totally stick my foot in it--What's it like to be that insensitive? Does she know she's being a huge bitch right now or is she blissfully unaware? How does anyone hang around her without wanting to beat her into the ground? And so today, weirdly, I'm happy to be on the other side of it.

Today kind of reminds me of a long-ago day, where I was handed quite possibly the biggest insult of my then-twenty years on Earth. I was in college and had just broken up with this guy and was moderately-to-severely shattered over the entire experience, which I handled in the most adult way possible: I stayed in my dorm room under the covers for three days, only emerging when one of my friends came to borrow my TV and told me in no uncertain terms that it was time to get out of my pajamas, if only for 15 minutes to take a much-needed shower. After a few more minutes of pouting, I decided she was right, so I hopped into the shower, stayed there for about an hour, and then, completely waterlogged but finally smelling once again like the First World, I climbed into an oversized hoodie and, with wet hair and no make-up and red-rimmed eyes, drove off to the 7-Eleven to get my friends some Slurpees as a peace offering for having been completely MIA for the better part of the week. I shuffled into the store and up to the Slurpee counter, where I lovingly mixed the cherry and Coke in perfect proportion, then carried the four drinks up to the counter to pay. The cashier gave me a quick smile and asked me how my slumber party was going. I laughed and said I was a little old for slumber parties, and he countered, "Yeah, I know. I meant your kids. You're here getting them Slurpees, right?" Whaaaa? Yep. Because the previous four days hadn't sucked enough, this 7-Eleven cashier took it upon himself to let me know that, at the age of 20, I looked old enough to be mother to four little ones. Awesome.

Anyway, this is turning into a huge wind-up for what is not actually a huge story at all:

Erin and I walked over to Potbelly to lunch today, and for whatever reason, Hyde Park went insane with the inadvertent insults between 11:15 and 11:30am, and they all hit me and Erin.

Instance 1: A very lovely Jehova's Witness asked Erin and I if we were mother and daughter. We didn't stick around long enough to find out who was supposed to be the mother in that little scenario, but I maintain it's me, just because it fits with the sort of day I'm having.

Instance 2: At Potbelly, the dude we see every damn week who should know by know that when he sees us coming he needs to start a wreck and a roast beef, both on regular, chose today to (a) not know us and (b) ask if we were getting a much deserved break from the kids. Once again, a totally nonsensical, and on top of the whole "who's the mommy" thing from 5 minutes previous, a kind of insulting, comment.

There, that's all. God, aren't you pissed now that you stuck around to read that entire thing? Sucker.

Key word searches.

2008-11-12T13:30:00.002-06:00

I find this hilarious, so now I have to share. Here's what people type in when the (presumably accidentally) find their way to my blog. And no, "mary gehl + awesome + writer" doesn't show up anywhere on the list (with your help, of course, we can fix this oversight). So here's the list, all typos belong to the original searchers:

10. how do i open my thermos
9. evgeny kissin: marriage
8. evgeny kissin married?
7. evgeny kissin marriage
6. evgeny kissin maariage
5. coffee wakes me up
4. robert downey jr
3. can't open thermos
2. evgeny kissin married
1. treebrain

The end.

What every writer needs.

2008-11-11T09:33:00.002-06:00

(a) This is National Novel Writing Month. Were you aware? I sure as hell wasn't. But it does make the book I'm currently reading--the e-published nightmare Not A Geisha--all the more timely. More on that later, though.

(b) In honor or National Novel Writing Month (or maybe to make us all feel really horrible that we aren't participating), Slog posted a link to Write or Die. Just in case you don't already pile enough stress and pressure on yourself, and you need a little extra ass-kicking when you're in front of your computer, pretending to write.

(c) "C" will be forthcoming, as soon as I get together my thoughts about Murakami's kind-of-memoir, What I Talk About when I Talk About Running. I'm going to attempt to dovetail it into Not A Geisha, along with a sprinkling of Valerie Frankel. Should be horrendous.

Photos of the day.

2008-11-03T09:48:00.007-06:00

17 October 2008. Twenty-two minutes into a wait for a bus on South Michigan Ave., and damn, my nose is pissed.

20 October 2008. That's whiskey. In a jar. Because I'm classy. No, seriously: that jar once housed fancy marinated artichokes. See? Classy.

23 October 2008. Hybrid corn book, why do you want to hurt me?

24 October 2008. My nieces are true Gehls. When candy is concerned, they start gathering early. Me? I'm just here to help.

3 November 2008. Crying over another manuscript? No...this is what I look like after 40 hours of childcare duty. I no longer understand how the world functions when there are little people sucking up all the energy of big people.

5'7"? For serious?

2008-10-21T14:29:00.003-05:00

So I was just over at Best Week Ever, keeping up on my gossip, when I came across their post* on disappointingly short actors.

First on their list: Robert Downey Jr., who clocks in at 5'7". Say wha'? I'm totally scandalized. I don't mind that my first celebrity crush is a weird home-invading former junkie, because he also happens to be a great actor. But 5'7"? I was counting on him for at least 6'. In fact, based on my one itty bitty little brush with this dude, I could have sworn he was tall. But then again, he probably only seemed that way because, when I was talking to him (or rather, full-on, spittle-flying freaking out at him**) I was prostrate on the counter of the Borders Cafe on Michigan Ave. Take my word for it. From that angle, he's supertall.

*Should anyone happen to read to the end of the entry (on BWE, or here, for that matter), I am in complete agreement with Sara's assessment of the last man on the list. Sorry Yev: that's the hard truth.

**Pretty much everyone in existence has heard this story, so I'll spare you all by not repeating it here. Again. For the millionth time. So this one time, I was working at Borders, and...ahhhh, psych!

The electrician-slash-home invasion specialist.

2008-10-16T15:11:00.002-05:00

[This is a conversation my mother had with an electrician earlier today. He stopped by to finish some wiring in the kitchen and noticed the plywood covering the window at the back of the house. My typescript will not do justice to the accent; my apologies.]

Electrician: What's that? D'you get broke into?
My ma: Oh, yeah, a few weeks ago someone threw a rock in, but never actually broke in.
Electrician: D'you got a gun?
My ma: [stunned] Nnn-no!
Electrician: Really: D'your husband?
My ma: No!!!
Electrician: Single gauge is all ya need. Here, I'll show ya... [turns to go out to his truck for what I can only assume is a big-ass stockpile of weapons...]

The marriage of Evgeny Kissin.

2008-10-16T13:05:00.005-05:00

This little album has nothing--nothing at all--to do with Photoshop, or with the time and talents of Joe or Scott. Nothing at all. I don't know why they love wasting their time on my fantasies, but who am I to complain?

A little too giddy for my own good, here, but it did the trick...

I'm holding my whiskey while Yev holds my...breast, perhaps? And shields me from oglers.

I mean seriously: can you blame him for wanting to lock it in?

Photos of the day.

2008-10-15T13:41:00.007-05:00

6 October 2008. The self-tanner had the opposite effect of the one intended.

11 October 2008. Why doesn't Natalie Dee understand
that I'd be the awesomest T-shirt model ever?

14 October 2008. Now that I know this is who I look when I'm on the phone with my ma,
I might have to stop calling her.

15 October 2008. You decide: is "Nobody Knows" or "Everybody Knows" the more appropriate theme song for this moment?

15 October 2008. Failing in my attempt to become Tia Russell. But still trying, anyway.

Someone was listening.

2008-10-15T13:21:00.002-05:00

I love it when the stars align, don't you? Over lunch today, E and I went on a field trip to a pavilion near my apartment building, where I've been wanting to take pictures, or rather, have someone take pictures of me. Right next to the pavilion, there's this fabulously large tree with a split trunk, and E suggested that it would likewise be a good place to get a shot. Today was a little too drippy, but it did put me in mind of when I was little (again with the 27-year-old memories!) and used to play "Wonder Woman" in the split-trunk tree in front of my house. And so what did RoflRazzi drop in my lap just now? Only this:

They have spies everywhere.

Smells like childhood.

2008-10-15T11:32:00.002-05:00

It smells like Iowa outside right now. More specifically, it smells like the alley behind Gehl Grocery on Franklin Street in Dow City (pop. 432). It's the smell of moisture hitting an old road that's more dust than tarmac, along with cigarette smoke, old damp cardboard, and a little bit of manure. I could breathe that in all day and miss my home state. I loved the Dow City of my childhood. My brothers and I, from the age of four, were allowed to walk by ourselves down to our grandpa's store. After we'd picked out and consumed our dime's worth of penny candy, we played hide-and-seek in the meat locker among the sides of aged beef and milk cartons. On special occasions, grandpa would let us play with dry ice. Once he'd had enough of us and needed to get some work done, he'd tell us to go play in traffic, so we'd run across the street to the post office, where Mr. Brassel would stamp "priority mail" bracelets around my wrists and then send me home with Grandma's mail. I'd walk home with my stamped accessories and chocolate smeared at the corners of my mouth, and when I got there grandma would complement my jewelry and let me wear my aunt's much-altered prom dress around the kitchen as I helped her fry up donuts for snack time.

Why can't I be 4 again? That was a good year.

That's excellent advice.

2008-10-07T11:05:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Mary. And people routinely called Mary to get her advice on things. Well, not so much her advice as her mom's advice, which is nearly always awesome and right on target and Mary was very proud to pass it off as her own.

And then one day, Mary went off the rails! All of the sudden, she couldn't keep the truth—her carefully guarded, 30-year-old secret—from bubbling up anymore. You see, Mary makes bad decisions. When left to her own devices, she attempts to do some really stupid shit. Seriously, epically bad.

Fortunately for Mary (but not so fortunately for Mary's blog, which would have benefited greatly from her idiotic life choices and the stories they would have created), Mary has fabulous friends who keep her in line with their own excellent advice and the occasional smack to the head.

In the past two weeks, here are things that Mary has attempted to do that she has had to be talked down from:

Mary: So I'm thinking of going to visit R in jail.
Everyone Mary Knows: Are you effing insane? Stay home.

Mary: I think it'd be a really smart idea to order this $318 corset off the Internet. Who needs measurements?
Everyone Mary Knows: [silence, rolling eyes] Save your money.

Mary: I'll have the chicken vindaloo, please.
(OK, so no one saved me from that one, but they laughed about it later as I drank a gallon of water and hoovered nan.)

Mary: Meh, another blind date? Ugh, idonwannago.
E: Go, dammit, if only to blog! [OK, so I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.]

So thanks, everyone, for giving me excellent advice. Except for the vindaloo thing, of course. But I'll get you back for that, you effers.

A-Ha!

2008-10-07T11:03:00.002-05:00

I'm very proud to say that E got this to me even before my beloved Best Week Ever could deliver. And now I'm passing onto the two people left who have not seen this really excellent explanation of that the eff is going on in the "Take On Me" video. Enjoy.

Photos of the day.

2008-10-03T12:24:00.011-05:00

Oh dear, I've been remiss in a lot of things recently...taking photos, blogging, etc. etc. I promise to do better in the near future. Now that I am officially not going to become a born-again Southerner I can stop worrying about a possible future life below the Mason-Dixon and start freaking out about my actual future life in Chicago. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

For your Friday afternoon viewing pleasure, some pics:

18 September 2008. If my flash has been working, you would have seen me holding a gigantic whiskey and looking jazzed about the play that was about to start. Of course, since you can't see anything, I could say anything. Therefore: In this photo, I'm making out with Evgeny Kissin.

19 September 2008. Same broken flash, different day. I'm mourning the loss of my favorite flip-flop though. Actually, no I'm not. In this photo, I'm jumping out of an airplane. There. Shame you can't actually see it.

20 September 2008. Since I spend all week doing very important Facebook upkeep work, I tend to spend Saturdays editing.

22 September 2008. Despite Jim's expression, he's actually very excited to be visiting the original Mr. & Mrs. Hair Weave.

23 September 2008. I'm all squinty.

30 September 2008. Do you know what's coming? Oh yes, yes you do. This is how excited I get about Boddington's.

1 October 2008. The only reason I consented to a nighttime river cruise is because I love to pretend it's February in October.

3 October 2008. My fondness for tiny spaces and decrepit buildings
continues to overwhelm me.

It's good to have friends with photoshop.

2008-09-26T14:02:00.004-05:00

Sure, he didn't cure my shiny-ness or trim inches off my waist (I'll have to talk to him about that, actually), but he did make me get a hug from Evgenny Kissin, so he's alright in my book. Thanks, Scott F., for making me ever-so-slightly more awesome than I already am. And thanks, of course, for giving Yev the date of his dreams:

Oddly, that "so excited I'm about to pee" look was already on my face...I must have known that Yev would materialize eventually...

Prose before Hos.

2008-09-25T13:06:00.000-05:00

That is all.

The longest pour in Chicago is at Steppenwolf.

2008-09-18T14:52:00.011-05:00

Last night, Kate took me out for an early birthday celebration to see "Kafka on the Shore" at Steppenwolf.

The parts I remember were really good, though Kate and I both agreed that the women were lacking—whether it was the actresses themselves who failed to deliver or the way their characters were written that prevented them from being interesting, I can't yet say.

What I can say is that, ounce for ounce, they serve the cheapest drinks in Chicago. Not pausing to think that I'd eaten an eggroll at 11am that day and not much else, I ordered a Maker's Mark before the show began. The girl at the bar, to my excitement and what I thought at the time would be my benefit, was unfamiliar with the neat pour. And thus, I wound up with about 5 ounces of bourbon. I did everything I could to drink it in the half hour before the show began (Kate eventually had to come to my rescue) and so it was, in a drunk frame of mind, that we sat through the first half of the show. It was as faithful to the book as a play could be, considering the fragmented and surreal plot...and by intermission I was enjoying myself considerably.

This is probably what led to the worst decision I've made in 72 hours (only 72 hours? I need to work on that)—to order another huge bourbon. Kate joined me this time, so I was on my own. I managed to drink most of it in fifteen minutes, though this time, I could hear my brain shouting "mistake! mistake! mistake!" with each swallow. I have absolutely no idea how long into the second act I got up to leave—five minutes? fifteen?—to get some fresh air and carbs, and I wound up watching the rest of the show from the balcony, because they don't re-seat on the floor.

Still, it was a fabulous evening. In one fell swoop, Kate gifted me with bourbon, my favorite author, and a really good looking, shirtless Asian dude. All in all, it was a heavenly entree into year 31.

Editor humor.

2008-09-18T14:52:00.009-05:00

From Married to the Sea:

marriedtothesea.com

Photos of the day.

2008-09-18T14:52:00.007-05:00

15 September 2008. This photo and my hips defy explanation.

16 September 2008. You're going to have to take my word for it that I'm acting like a cat for a reason.

17 September 2008. One of the subjects in this photo is way too excited to be there. The other subject is mortified beyond belief.

I have a lot on my mind.

2008-09-18T14:52:00.002-05:00

...It's been a very odd week. Does anyone know? Is it a full moon? So, my brother was in a car accident (he's OK) and my someone threw a huge rock through my mom's window (she's OK, too) and after 8 months and 3 interviews I have ruled out moving to Atlanta and starting over again.

Last week, I got a random email from someone who didn't give his name (and was emailing from an old friend's account) claiming that said friend, who we'll call R, was in jail and needed my help. And I never heard back. So I took it upon myself to figure out what the hell was going on. In a weird way, I was really relieved, because honestly, up to that point, I figured that when R dropped off the radar back in December, it was because he was dead. Or in Mexico. Or dead in Mexico. You get the idea. Plus, this sudden people search gave me something to do during my work avoidance hours...and gave me something to talk about when I was breaking from work avoidance. All huge pluses in my book.

So I searched, then forgot, then picked it back up again, and yesterday, I found him. In the rush of excitement that came with (a) solving a puzzle and (b) finally figuring out the answer to a question I'd had for the whole of 2008, I set about making arrangements to visit or write or basically see what would happen next (the catch being, of course, that for anything to happen next, I'd have to further the situation myself since jail is, you know, stasis and all that, so it's not like R would suddenly be able to get the action moving).

I was pretty amped about the possibilities, drama-wise, that this situation entailed. And I know: that's immature and reckless and actually kind of mean to a kid who really is in trouble. What can I say? And then today, on top of regaining my common sense and realizing that this wasn't really a situation to fuck around with (and with friends calling me[or the situation] dangerous, obsessed, addicted, etc.), I decided that my imagination is just going to have to fill in the blanks, and that if a story is to be written, it'll have to be more fiction, less memoir.

And so this sudden ending, on top of the moving and interviewing and car wrecking and rock hurling and CL experimenting, has left me feeling unsettled.

This weekend had better be good; I need something to take my mind off of all this nondrama.

The unannounced experiment comes to an end.

2008-09-15T08:47:00.004-05:00

What would my life be without blind dates? I swear... I had one fabulous blind date in 2002 or so, and ever since then, it's just been a series of stories ranging from the gut wrenching to the embarrassingly entertaining. At this point, I'm not even dating for the sake of dating; I'm dating for the sake of material-gathering. Last week, E and I were talking, and with her inspiration and guidance, I decided to run a comparative study of the worst three free sites I could find, just to see what would happen. Tragically, it's already run its course...mostly because it's depressing and exhausting, and my lack of home Internet connection is making it slightly harder to keep up with these things.

But here's the very brief rundown of (a) what didn't happen over the last 72 hours and (b) why I'm calling it quits.

Site 1:

From "this1zg69d4ya":

"Hey what's g69d with you this afternoon,I agree a g69d beer must be cold,but I have drank them hot,guiness stout the one 4 me,I just trying 2 meet some new an exciting people an see what happens g69d sexxx an conversation,make you live longer an happier,so"

Site 2:

[crickets]

Site 3:

An email exchange:

Me: Two things I like...(1) Low expectations. (2) Silently judging doormen.

Actually, the two might go hand in hand...at least they did for me when I lived downtown and had doormen and low expectations. It happens ;) Better luck with your ad this time! I'm here to help you out because, hey, it's a response, so you're at least a third of the way there, and I've never been incarcerated. And, as a special bonus, I'll tell you that when I was in seventh grade, I was Sheriff for a Day, so now you have law enforcement on your side, too. Excellent.

Him: Thank you for responding. You are so sweet not to call me an asshole like other women who wrote back. I think I like you already.

Me: Glad I could help make your day. But I'll reserve judgment until I find out that the "rock hard" in your email name [which was rockhard***@***.com] is for how you like your music...

Him: actually I prefer lite FM....rock hard music gives me a headache. The rock hard in my email is in reference to my penis. Hard to believe huh

Me: Shockingly, no. I was hoping, in fact, that it referred to music, the state of your walls, your abs...anything but your penis. Then again, you've saved me the trouble of meeting you for coffee. Chances are, if you changed your email address, fewer girls would call you an asshole. That's my advice to you for the day.

I'm going to have to get more interesting.

2008-09-15T08:07:00.007-05:00

...if I'm going to keep posting pictures of myself every day. What started as a vanity project is quickly taking a very boring and depressing turn. Nonetheless, I persevere.

12 September 2008. Crochet and tea.
You will see a lot of this during the winter months.

13 September 2008. Heading out for the evening.

14 September 2008. And staying in.

And, to make it a little cuter, here's my cat, the devil.

My great-grandmother would be so ashamed of me.

2008-09-15T08:03:00.001-05:00

As a 1930s wife, I am
Poor

Take the test!

A slow week for pictures.

2008-09-12T15:39:00.008-05:00

Call it exhaustion, call it a full memory card and dead batteries, call it a startling email that threw off my groove. It was a bad week for photographs—both getting them taken and the images that were eventually captured. But nonetheless, here they are...

5 September 2008. Trying to figure out why anyone would want to work at Sur la Table, let alone live in one.

6 September 2008. Moved in just enough to be annoyed, but not to the point where I have furniture to sit on.

8 September 2008. Hanging out by the prettiest dumpster stash in Chicago.

11 September 2008. A demon-stration of exactly what I intend to do as soon as I'm done taking this stupid photo.

A good month for books.

2008-09-12T15:35:00.002-05:00

Also just out this month from the Press...

The Better to Eat You With by Joel Berger. An entertaining and interesting book about predation by the nicest man ever to don a moose suit and fling urine-soaked snowballs at wolves. From The Press Web site:

At dawn on a brutally cold January morning, Joel Berger crouched in the icy grandeur of the Teton Range. It had been three years since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone after a sixty-year absence, and members of a wolf pack were approaching a herd of elk. To Berger’s utter shock, the elk ignored the wolves as they went in for the kill. The brutal attack that followed—swift and bloody—led Berger to hypothesize that after only six decades, the elk had forgotten to fear a species that had survived by eating them for hundreds of millennia.

One I would actually buy.

2008-09-08T15:22:00.002-05:00

It's not often that I can say this...in fact, I'd say that it only happens once every two years or so. I worked on this book last year (I was the production editor, guys, not the MS editor, so don't direct your typo ire at me), and it's finally out! And I'm happy about it. And this is actually a title that I would buy. And read! Whoo. It's an exciting day. I'll keep you posted when the other two books that I've worked on that might be worth paying to read hit the shelves. In the meantime, here's the blurb from the press Web site:

“By necessity, by proclivity, by delight,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said in 1876, “we all quote.” But often the phrases that fall most readily from our collective lips—like “fire when ready,” “speak softly and carry a big stick,” or “nice guys finish last”—are those whose origins and true meanings we have ceased to consider. Restoring three-dimensionality to more than fifty of these American sayings, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too turns clichés back into history by telling the life stories of the words that have served as our most powerful battle cries, rallying points, laments, and inspirations.

Treebrain is here.

2008-09-05T15:35:00.002-05:00

Steve is on the scene. You can read all about the exciting day to day of funguswatch 2008 over at The Sneeze. Start here.

There is nothing I can add to this perfection. But I am so, so happy that this season is upon us.

Photos of the day.

2008-09-05T11:42:00.003-05:00

3 September 2008. In under the wire: crashing at midnight after moving.

4 September 2008. The first chill of fall.

Checking in with Bai Ling

2008-09-05T11:37:00.002-05:00

It's been a slow news week. Busy to be sure--moving, unpacking, moping, unsleeping. But, other than managing to balance a cup of coffee on my belly without realizing it yesterday (I have the coffee ring on my shirt to prove it), I can't seem to come up with anything to say that anyone would want to hear about. Not that this usually stops me from rambling on, of course...

So today, because it's Friday, I'm going to head on over to Bai Ling's blog and see if she has any advice for my weekend...

We all just landed from the moon for the curiosity of the Hollywood........
But there is nothing there........

That says it all, I think. I'll put that advice in motion and let you know how it works out for me.

A late birthday this year.

2008-09-05T11:24:00.003-05:00

I could have sworn that in one of the 962 letters I've sent to Evgeny Kissin, I told him when my birthday was and what I was expecting from him for my 31st. He must have lost it in the shuffle of touring, I'd imagine. But better late than never!

He'll be back in Chicago in February. Normally, I'd mortgage my soul for a seat in a box, but--wonder of wonders--Kodo, a fabulous taiko drumming group (and my favorite, because they're the only one I know about) will also be appearing at Orchestra Hall. So, I'll have to forgo the box and spread my money and bizarre crush around a wee bit. And I'll also have to delay my present to myself for 5 months, but since it's a twofer, I'm sure it will be worth it.. Who the hell am I kidding? It'll be my half-birthday present to me. I'm too impatient to hold out for that long.

But still...anyone who will be in the vicinity of Michigan and Jackson on either February 17 or the 22nd can pull up a seat next to me and catch me when I swoon!

Photos of the day

2008-09-03T08:32:00.005-05:00

30 August 2008. I'm sure it wasn't that funny.

31 August 2008. I'm going to be sad when they finally
tear down the Roosevelt Metra stop.

1 September 2008. I just really liked this door.

2 September 2008. Moving again.

You would think I would have learned by now...

2008-08-30T11:52:00.005-05:00

That I'm just not meant to be in the kitchen in any official capacity. Remember the mochi? Remember the deviled eggs, for god's sake? Who fucks up deviled eggs? Oh, me. That's right.

Last night, I got it in my head that I should take toffee to a cookout that I'm off to tonight. Because, as everyone knows, nothing screams "America," "Labor Day," or, indeed, "cookout on a hot summer night" quite like toffee. I amaze myself in my appropriateness sometimes. (In all fairness, to balance out the oddity, I also made cupcakes, OK?)

I was a little bit nervous, just because it gets so effing hot in my kitchen if you turn on the hot water, let alone the stove or the oven, and I didn't know if the toffee was going to set properly. But, nothing ventured.... Plus, I'd just gone to the store and spent $15 on butter, so I was in too late at that point anyway.

I poured the ingredients into my Dutch oven to boil, and we were off! It was looking fab:

Aw...how beautiful! I was so proud of myself. The candy was quickly reaching hard-crack stage, and I was just sitting around making googly eyes at it when I realized that I'd already packed up all of my baking sheets and had nothing to pour the candy onto to cool it. I dashed around looking for the box with the "baking sheets" sharpie scrawl. Couldn't find it...couldn't find it...but I COULD smell burning sugar, so I grabbed the next best thing. The box marked "griddle."

Yes, that's right: I decided it cool my candy on a cast iron griddle. That should work like a charm, or...whatever. I poured it out—a little thicker than I would have liked—and set it to cool.

Four hours later, it was almost there (for the record, this should have taken about 30 minutes. Stupid cast iron). Now, under normal circumstances, I would have flipped over the cookie sheet and either flexed it or pounded it with a knife, and the toffee would have popped off and shattered, ready to eat.

Did you know that you can't flex cast iron? And that pounding it with a knife does nothing more than break your knife?

...At least it looked beautiful:

See? Cool and smooth and gorgeous. Well, the toffee, is, I mean. And here you can also see what creating toffee in an un–air conditioned kitchen does to cooks. I'm the opposite of the toffee! (I'd also like to point out that I'm wearing a strapless dress, sickos.)

I took that photo about 10 minutes after I decided to give my toffee up for lost. You can see the little gouge marks in the chocolate. There was nothing--but nothing--I could do to get that fucking candy off the griddle. So I tossed it on the counter with a sigh that said "good riddance"—and watched as it cracked in half. Yay! The lesson learned here? Unlike thermoses, getting pissed off at toffee does have its rewards.

Photo of the day.

2008-08-30T11:49:00.003-05:00

29 August 2008. How I would appear to the peeping-tom gnome
who lives in my kitchen cupboard, if such a thing existed.

Foiled once again by my thermos.

2008-08-28T10:25:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my morning ritual of tears and frustration: trying to get my coffee thermos open. Today I almost didn't bother. The coffee I have at home is not to my liking; plus, I ran out of both milk and cream and have resorted to using those bitty International Delight french vanilla creamers (which I think are past their sell-by date, as they looked oddly gloopy when I was pouring them into the thermos this morning). I got to work and put the thermos on my desk...and decided to have a Dr Pepper for breakfast instead. It was delicious. But about 10 minutes ago, I started twitching just a wee bit. Seeing as how I have 47 cents in my wallet and therefore can't go buy coffee downstairs, I decided I'd crack open what I'd brought and give it a whirl.

And crack it open, I did.
In my finger-blistering, carpal tunnel syndrome–inducing, tear-bringing attempt to get my coffee open, I broke my thermos. Well, it wasn't so much me as it was the angle at which it slammed into the floor when I got pissed.

28 August 2008. All I wanted was some coffee.

See? There's my thermos, and there's me, awash in grief. I'm actually glad for the opportunity to take this photo, though, as I'm going to try to take a photo of myself every day...because I am vanity + boredom personified. Last night's attempt follows:

27 August 2008. Wheee.

Awkward: A Love Story

2008-08-28T08:13:00.003-05:00

This story is composed of lines from last week's personal ads from the Reader. I had hoped to use entirely found sentences for this particular project, but as it happens, I'll need more than one week's worth for that. Points for every line you spot that's from an ad...

Awkward: A Love Story

This was the awkward part. The only thing Claire was interested in was trying this as quickly as possible to see if it was something she liked. After all, it was her first time, and she supposed it could be fun, if only she would try it, but still. She was nervous.

“Try me! Just mention the ad!” the sign on the community corkboard and the Laundromat had proclaimed. There were tear-off strips on the bottom with a hand-scrawled phone number. She furtively tore off one of the strips—the sixth from the left, hoping for a measure of luck from her favorite number—and stuffed it in her jeans pocket and shuffled away. The flyer flapped in the breeze of the window fan, waving goodbye.

Was it a 4 or a 6? A 7 or a 2? Between the bad penmanship and the sweat that had soaked into her jeans and started to felt the paper, she couldn’t even make out the number. She’d just have to start dialing.

She pressed 807-4113 and waited for the first ring, swinging around in her chair and reaching to quietly latch her door. She didn’t need her officemates walking by at an awkward moment and assuming the worst from snatches of overheard conversation.

“Bust out the biscuits!”

“Excuse me?”

“Bust out the Biscuits Bakery. Can I help you.”

“Um, no, sorry. Wrong number.”

Next she tried 802-4113, worrying over the possible 6 and wondering who would answer. She was fast losing her nerve.

“Hello?”

“Oh, ah, hi, I, uh, am mentioning your ad.”

“What?”

“Your, uh, your ad. You know? I’m mentioning it?”

“Look princess, I’m all about the communication, but you’re going to have to help me out. What the hell are you talking about?”

“The notice board at the Laundromat? Did you…you know…”

“Oh my god! I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

“You have? So you know what this is regarding, I mean, you know why I’m calling?”

“God yeah, of course I do! It’s been twenty-three damn years since I posted that ad about my lost dog. I just didn’t expect you to get reincarnated into such a sexy sounding human.”

“Uh, no…I think you must have the wrong——”

“Get serious Lola! I can hear your gorgeous bark in your voice yet. I saved all your toys and your bed. When are you com——” *click*

Deep breaths, deep breaths, Claire repeated to herself. They can’t all be oddballs. She forged on, steadying her hand to punch 807-6 (this time)113.

“Hello, you’ve reached ‘Who’s to Judge,’ Waterloo’s premier dating boutique…”

At this, Claire felt herself relax into her chair. The lucky six saved her from dealing with any more weirdoes. She wished that she’d just dialed it first.

“…Please leave your name, number, and a little bit about yourself and we’ll do the rest!”

“Mmmm, hiI’mClairecalleightohtwoninethreesevenfivekaybyeohthankskaybye.”

***

Claire was doing a backbend over her exercise ball and folding her hair, which had pooled on the carpet, into unusual shapes. She was happiest like that, when she was doing nothing spectacular. A scratching noise at the door caught her attention and she righted herself too quickly; the blood rushed from her head and left stars in its wake as she tripped toward the front door.

A note on red cardstock had been eased under the weather-stripping.

The logo in the upper left-hand corner prominently proclaimed Who’s to Judge to be the sender.

They had called her back—only after, she imagined, hiring a crack team of ex-CIA code breakers to figure out what she had mumbled in her message—and had set about arranging her first rendezvous. And now, they had sent her the details.

Your date will meet you at Socrates Coffee at seven o’clock tonight. He’ll be the one who, in his words, “adds so much cream to coffee it looks like dirty milk and believes in the power of argyle (socks, preferably).” We have told your date to look for a woman who knits in public. Please be available and not looking for perfection. We will contact you shortly for a follow up to this experience. Who’s to Judge thanks you in advance for your cooperation.

Claire sat perfectly still for a moment to calm her nerves. She was still loopy from hanging around with her head below her heart. Combined with the sudden anticipation of meeting a stranger, it was quite too much. Hugging her exercise ball for support, she managed to get herself standing, and still wobbly, she made her way toward her closet. The classic man or average guy would be perfect for me, she thought, then immediately chastised herself for going expressly against WTJ’s instructions in even hoping for perfection. So she revised: Waking up with someone special, who doesn’t snore, is great. Still nervous about jinxing herself with words like “special” and great, she kept at it as she selected her outfit: This could be fun. I’m not looking for hip or cool. As she twisted her hair into a knot and pinned it off-center, behind her left ear, she practiced revising her true feelings (I’m hoping to have a child some day soon) into a more suitable first-date statement (I have baggage but I’m not looking for a bellhop). She giggled at herself and in a rare moment of self-confidence announced to the mirror, “See? I’m awesome!” before doing a final spin and heading out for the café.

***

To save herself the trouble of standing and potentially being noticed by the clientele at Socrates, who were everything-er—cooler, younger, fashionable-er, and, she imagined, cattier—than she was accustomed to mingling with, Claire ordered a large pot of Earl Grey and sat by the window, placed her knitting in her lap, and waited for her be-argyled blind date to arrive. She was too nervous to actually knit; she didn’t want to look too matronly (yet) and her shaking hands were leading to dropped stitches anyway, so instead she concentrated on reading the auras of the streetlights on the corner. She was in the midst of trying to decide if the white was melting into yellow (indicating jealousy or selfishness) or orange (which would have meant ambition or pride) when the chair across her was roughly pulled out from under the table, metal legs screeching on the tile.
Of course, Claire thought, after my careful planning to be discreet, everyone would HAVE to look now, wouldn’t they? And of course they were, for the man who stood across the table from Claire was dressed in a high-collared shirt, top hat, leather apron and—what the hell?—a cape.
“Nice argyle.”
“What?”

“Nice…argyle.”

“I’m not wearing any argyle, am I?”

“Sorry, I was trying to be witty by accident. I’m Claire.”

“Hey…I’m Max. Nice bun.”

Claire clamored to come up with anything that didn’t sound idiotic or disappointed. “Ummm, thanks. So…I like your…hat. Where did you get something like that?”

“Consignment. I love secondhand shops. I probably own too many thrift store ties, but I’m not sick in the head, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No…just wondering why the hat and the cape? Why not argyle and ties?”

“I’m not a frat boy,” Max spat. “Strictly working class.”

“Well hey, working class can be classy!”
Max stared blankly for a beat too long, then stood abruptly and went to the bar, returning with a coffee-stained mug. He sat back down and helped himself to some of Claire’s tea.
“God, sorry,” Claire said. “Just my bad sense of humor striking. I guess this is the awkward part, huh? It’s just, you know, I get hit on a lot by the wrong type of guys, and this is my first time doing…this…and, well, you know, I’m…” her voice trailed off.
“…nervous,” she finished weakly.

“S’okay,” Max offered. “Let’s just start off nice and slow. What do you do for work?”

“I’m a journalist.”

“Ah! I like that. Means you’re not so interested in the filthy lucre, eh?”

“Pardon?”

“Money! Money! You don’t worship it. Me neither. Good on ya. So you said the wrong guys. What type of wrong?”

“Oh, you know…the wrong type being too old, too drunk, or too dumb.”

“That’s just ‘cause you’re too pudgy. Guys’ll think you can’t be picky.”

“What?!”
“Now, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Me? I like it. My fingers, they need to stroll and meander about the female form. But it has to be ample.”
“Sounds a bit like fondling produce at Stanley’s or something.”

Max’s face blanked again.

“You know, Stanley’s? Down the street? Across from the—oh, never mind.”

Max shook it off and switched tracks. “We wouldn’t be a bad looking couple, just a little overweight, s’all.” He seemed to brighten at the prospect. Whether it was her figure or the thought of peaches and melons at Stanley’s Produce that caused the corners of his mouth to turn slightly upward, Claire had completely lost track. She had to reel it back in.

“So anyway, I really do want the story behind your outfit. It’s so…unexpected. Is that apron part of your work? What is it you do?”

“I’m a costumer. I’m working on a new line—this is a prototype.”

“Oh, what is it?” Claire asked, as she secretly wondered if there was some sort of blue collar costumers’ union that met to discuss manly things like lace and hooks and eyes and tulle.

“The look represents the worst mass murderers the world has ever seen.”

Run! screamed Claire’s brain, but her legs were shocked into stillness. Run like the wind.

“I, uh, well, that’s certainly, um, a loo——”

“’Scuse me, be back in a sec.” Claire was grateful that Max cut her off and left the table. It would give her time to figure out how to respond. But what could she possibly say about—or to—a man dressed like a murderer? Was she on a date with the Ripper? Still frozen to her chair, Claire watched as Max walked to the back of the café…and went into the ladies’ room.

What? He’s not a dude?! Claire had been wrong yet again. As she got up from her chair and bolted from the café, she cursed herself for expecting the worst at every stage, only to watch the bar drop lower and lower. Indeed, that last moment had been the awkward part—horrifying and awkward. She ran. Of course, if Claire had stayed to see Max remove her apron to reveal the belt made of handcuffs (not very period, Max knew, yet aesthetically pleasing and terribly convenient), she would have realized that, when it came to Who’s to Judge, the awkwardness and horror was never too soon nor too late—it was just ever present.

What we learned on Saturday: that things were not nearly chaotic enough.

2008-08-27T12:20:00.014-05:00

I don't know if it's sad or not that this past Saturday afternoon was months in the making. It probably is, but I don't care, because it was every bit as awesome and horrible and stomach churning as I hoped it would be (in all fairness, that last bit undoubtedly was the result of trying to emulate the Britney Spears Health Regimen). Anyway, Kate and I got it into our heads (or I got it into mine and convinced Kate) that it would be hi-lar-i-ous to get a bunch of Cheetos and Frapuccinos and rent Chaotic, Britney and Kevin's ill-conceived and ill-fated reality show.

Here are some other lessons that we learned that day:

22-year old starlets should not be given camcorders and free access to wield them however they see fit.
Brit surrounds herself with really unfortunate looking people.
Mo, Brit's security guard, was the breakout star of the show, and/or the only person in her entire entourage with common sense
Even the commonsensical and upstanding Mo bowed to the pressure and decided to like Kevin when he realized how much less annoying and whiny Britney was once they hooked up.
Kevin thinks he's classy.
One can make a "Gasoline" by combining cognac and Grand Marnier and drinking it out of a big fucking snifter.
Kevin cannot pronounce "Grand Marnier."
Britney is scared of flying.
Kate, at the height of "Chaotic"-induced boredom, looks exactly like Britney-on-a-plane.
Watching a lonely, attention-starved girl try--and fail--to make her life and love sound interesting for a camera that she's in control of is enough to make you feel dirty and greasy. Or maybe that's the Cheetos.

If Britney wrote fortune cookies:

"Love is respect, commitment, honesty, trust. Love is...not just love. Love is all those things...combined. And when you're ready to really deal with all those things, you're...ready to deal with love." [ed note: just for clarification, all those ellipses are merely Mahatma Britney collecting her thoughts before proceeding to the next syllable.]

"I really think there's a time in every woman's life where if she hasn't had companionship she should just let it go and be her hot mama self."

"People can take away everything from you but they can never take away your truth."

"That's a hot picture. I wonder what it means."

"My love doesn't scare me. Other people's love scares me."

"Love is a cool thing but it's something that you work at."

"Everyone's entitled to their opinion. That's what makes America so great."

[ed. note: just typing these out, I'm beginning to feel like maybe she's channeling Jack Handey.]

"I wanted that fairy tale. But then, that didn't happen."

"That's the scary thing about love: you have to be free and open and all those things."

***

So while all this was going on, Kate and I were doing our best to eat the way we imagined the Spears Clan to go at it before Britney's big break on Nickelodeon: cheap beer, chips, and pigs in a blanket. Kate lovingly captured the whole pig-in-a-blanket process on camera. You'll also note that, despite the fact there were pictures of her, she included none when she sent the files to me. That's why I'm mentioning her name so much. Katekatekatekatekate. She was there, too. It wasn't just me. I swear. Kate. I'll post a pig-in-a-blanket tutorial later for those of you who are dying to recreate the magic, but in the meantime, go check out Natalie Dee instead. She does everything better than me, including bad Southern accents and wiener wings. You won't be sorry.

By way of apologizing for not describing the full glory of the afternoon all in one post, I'll leave you with these delectable images, courtesy of Kate. (katekatekatekate. She was there.)

Here, we have the remnants of the appetizer course.

If you don't wash your hands after the Cheetos, you'll have a nice little snack for later. Just a tip, y'all!

Slicing the wiener. The shiny, juicy, nitrate-y wiener.

This was about the point where Britney smushed her face up against the camera lens and started salivating. Mmmm. Pigs-in-a-blanket. They're magical.

Saturday night plans.

2008-08-19T15:19:00.002-05:00

This just arrived in my inbox, from Kate:

Huh. A Google search of "britney spears favorite foods" mentions cookie dough ice cream, pasta, hot dogs, and pizza. Thank god it's not just Frappucinos and Cheetos!

I love several things about the above statement, not the least of which is that Kate capped in all the right places. But the thing I love most is what it represents: we have rented "Chaotic" and are now fully committed to drinking cheap beer and frozen coffee and eating junk food, all in the name of feeling closer to a celebrity who has fallen almost completely off the radar.

Wheeee! I'm so glad I never threw away that tube top I got when I was 12. It's just Brit's style. And I'm bringing it back.

Say it with me: "No, thank you."

2008-08-19T09:38:00.007-05:00

Oh god, I'm still so mad about this. I had the most horribly awkward encounter a week ago. What pisses me off is not that it was awkward or that it took me an hour-plus to get there from Hyde Park so I could have a miserable time. It's that it never should have happened in the first place.

This guy and I dated briefly last summer. He was a good summer date--nice restaurants, dancing...lots of cliches like parking and walking by the lake. It was fun. And I should have let it just stand for those few months and then come to an end. But I didn't. Why? Because somewhere along the way I lost the ability to say "no." This guy had no problem with "no," incidentally. And when I'd hear it, that was my cue to delete his number from my phone and walk away. I was always good at that part. But inevitably, he'd change his mind and ring me up. My resolve would weaken and instead of "no, thank you," I'd say "Sure! Let's meet up," and reprogram his number into my phone. And he wouldn't show, and then a few months later I'd get another spate of emails and texts, I'd agree to meet with him, and I'd get stood up. And I never learned. Or maybe I did, but put the lesson on the back burner. I don't know.

Last weekend I finally lost my shit, though not in the way that I should have. I called him and asked if he was actually intending to follow through on his latest invitation. He said yes, but left it there, so I named a time and a place, got on a bus, and took a book with me for company at the bar, pretty well convinced that he would never get there, and that in another month I'd be doing exactly the same thing all over again, because, well, it's what I do. I say "sure."

I was mildly shocked when he did actually show up, and now that the evening has come and gone, I rather wish he hadn't, because now I have this boring and awkward ninety minutes at the Map Room doing 2 things: fighting for space in my head with all the lovely dates that we went on months before, and destroying my fondness for the Map Room.

No--I need to learn how to say "no, thank you." It would make things so much more tidy for me...even if it did fuck up the betting pools over at marysaysyes.com. (On the plus side though, that "always" square, where the smart money should have always gone heretofore, is hard to collect on, being infinite and all....)

Let's go see if Guru Bai has anything to say about this today:

I think that what people do in Nebraska, either chasing the dangerious storm or watch foot ball, what eles is here? So boring.......

Exactly, Bai Ling, you genius you. That fits my situation precisely.

Yearbooking myself.

2008-08-18T15:10:00.010-05:00

So while I can't necessarily do better than Alex Blagg at BWE, I can at least steal his ideas. And that's what I'm doing. Go here to see Alex's original post about yearbooking yourself. And then go here to give it a try. You won't be sorry.

Oh, how the years roll by. . . .

1950. It looks like Johnny backhanded me a few times before scooping up Mary Jane and taking her to the dance, instead.

1964: I would try to make a joke here, but I look too disturbingly similar to my Aunt Kathy. I do kinda like the hair though. Maybe I should just embrace my inner librarian.

1970: I am the only girl alive who made it through the late Sixties without having any fun whatsoever.

1972: Two years later, I'm still making up for lost time. But despite my deep commitment to learning how to party, I still managed to fit a sex change in there somewhere.

1984: "Man, he's like tripendicular, ya know?"

Meet my new guru.

2008-08-14T10:53:00.004-05:00

Bai Ling, of course. From her blog:

Every day life is art, and every art is life, without either, either will live, treat life lke art then you will enjoy and celebrate every moment of breath.
We are lucky aren't we?

Le sigh. I'm so at peace now. She makes a much better guru than my former font of wisdom, Rosemary Boggs, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's own Supermarket Sleuth. Just for reference:

Here's Rosemary.

And here's Bai Ling.

I have made the correct decision. And I will make it my solemn duty to bring to you Bai Ling's brilliant philosophy of life once a week.

I'm easily entertained today.

2008-08-14T10:42:00.004-05:00

First of all, I'm starving. Really. I'm so hungry. And it's 10:42. This happened to me a few weeks ago, I was starving for 24 hours--no matter what I ate (and believe me, I gave it my all), I was still hungry. And just like a few weeks ago, the rumbling in my stomach is reminding me of Murakami's short story "The Second Bakery Attack" (published in The Elephant Vanishes). But don't worry: I'm not going to go steal bread at knifepoint. I may, however, reread that story. So should you. Here's why:

We took turns opening the refrigerator door and hoping, but no matter how many times we looked inside, the contents never changed. Beer and onions and butter and dressing and deodorizer. It might have been possible to saute the onions in the butter, but there was no chance those two shriveled onions could fill our empty stomachs. Onions are meant to be eaten with other things. They are not the kind of food you use to satisfy an appetite.

***

While she hunted for more fragments of food, I leaned over the edge of my boat and looked down at the peak of the underwater volcano. The clarity of the ocean water all around the boat gave me an unsettled feeling, as if a hollow had opened somewhere behind my solar plexus--a hermetically sealed cavern that had neither entrance nor exit. Something about this weird sense of absence--this sense of the existential reality of nonexistence--resembled the paralyzing fear you might feel when you climb to the very top of a high steeple. This connection between hunger and acrophobia was a new discovery for me.

Second of all, I've found all sorts of amusing things to distract me this morning while I don't work. The question is: are these things really amusing, or is the book I'm working on so effing horrible that everything seems awesome by comparison? Your call. Take a look:

Party Pictures, from Sorry I Missed Your Party (E should definitely give a thought to sending some in);
Videogum's recommendations for new TV shows based on romcoms;
The Waffle House Wedding, courtesy of List of the Day; and
Kurt Vonnegut's rules for writing, also from List of the Day

Treebrain time is almost upon us.

2008-08-13T15:48:00.003-05:00

Kate was kind enough a few years ago to point out The Sneeze, an entertaining and distracting blog that made my days editing medical journals go by much more quickly. My favorite feature is undoubtedly the annual Tree Brain Watch. Steve, author of The Sneeze and all-round normal dude, took a hiatus this spring, and it had me particularly worried, because seriously, I don't think I'd be able to go on without knowing about the front-yard fungal activities of 2008. But, thank god, he's back, and he's on the lookout. And he's designing a mug for this year's festivities.

All is right with the world.

My horoscope from 10 days ago.

2008-08-12T15:18:00.000-05:00

(Let me just say that not having Internet access at home is making me mildly pouty, and it's really affecting my blog output. I've been carrying around a little piece of paper folded into quarters for over a week now; it has all sorts of notes jotted down about the things I need to write about. But then, you know, at work, where I have a computer that's absolutely sticky with Webiness, I get distracted by silly things like editing and proofreading. So here I am today, trying to remember, among other things, who the hell Michael Cook is. Other notes that I wrote down, which I'm not even going to try to figure out, involve "boy conversation," "marysaysyes.com" [side note: just remembered what that one means], "liquidarian, wha?" "artinst rm," "no shampoo thing," "she was recycling when I was still crapping in my landfill-clogging, nonbiodegradable Papmpers," and "send plates to Smith." I think that last one is a work note, but still, you get the point.)

Michael and the Horoscope!

So, way back on August 1, my horoscope said 2 things: that my friends would find me difficult to be around because I was being "myself," and that " You can meet someone interesting now, and unusual circumstances add to the excitement."

I went out that evening with a new friend (careful to avoid the oldies, since they probably would have punched me before evening's end) and I told her about the romance prognostication. She responded by trying to set me up with the two bartenders who were serving us whiskeys at the sad, sad, so-20-years-ago watering hole we had chosen (one of whom was obviously gay, one of whom participated in competitive typing, and neither of whom were terribly interesting--or interested in me). On the way home that night, I decided that cabs fell under the heading "unusual circumstances," so I flirted as hard as I could with my cab driver. Mostly, this involved me yelling, "What? What? I like Spiderman! What was that?" so as to hear and be heard over the roar of open windows as we sped down Lake Shore Drive. And it ended when I chickened out of giving him my phone number.

The following day, I headed north to babysit my niece. While waiting underground at the Roosevelt Red Line stop, some old dude started pacing back and forth just a few feet away from me, muttering and mopping his forehead with his handkerchief. He stopped and looked at me as I fanned myself and held my hair off my neck and hit me with a wonderful line: "Goddamn it's hot down here!" I laughed and concurred, because you know what? I'm affable, dammit. A smile and a nod of the head means that I'm nice; it does not mean "let's have sex." Unfortunately, this dude had not received that particular memo, and so when the train arrived 30 seconds later, he sidled up to me and said, "Miss? Miss? May I beg a seat beside you? You have cap-ti-vat-ed me!" My polite-yet-noncommittal response was invitation enough: for the next half hour, I was treated to the musings of a formal toothless gentleman in a frayed and shabby suit that sported a wrinkled and sweat-soaked silk hankie.

Mostly, he just sat next to me and said "Michael. 773-451-XXXX" over and over, pausing every so often to ask if his phone number was officially drilled into my head (the answer is yes, it is, so if anyone wants a date, I can tell you where to call). After he tired of this game, he started telling me all about how much of a player he was in his younger days, and how his father and uncle had laughed at his caddish ways then smiled knowingly when he met the woman who would become his wife. They had, according to my new good pal Michael, 20 wonderful years together before she was carried off by the diabetes, but he still wore her MedVac bracelet for the memories. Then the usual poll: Was I married? Engaged? Otherwise involved? A lesbian? Once he had ascertained that I was straight (a revealing mistake that I will never make again), I heard no end of how I'd make a better man of him and he'd make a satisfied woman out of me.

I have never been so thankful to hear the words "Now approaching: Sheridan. Doors open on the right." I leaped out of my seat, followed closely by good ol' Mike, who treated me to a kiss on the hand before I managed to scamper away into the safe haven of my brother's car.

The true bummer here is that I spent the better part of the train ride trying to read, listen to my iPod, stare out the window--anything was better than looking like I was interested in what Michael had to say. But about 2 stops before Sheridan, he started telling me stories about his uncle--Sam Cooke. Whether you believe it to be true or not (I, personally, am disinclined), it was still fun to listen to. Poor bastard; he should have broken out that material from the get-go. It wouldn't have been enough to get me to forget his missing teeth, but still...

Brooke Hogan: my new archnemesis.

2008-08-12T12:42:00.000-05:00

I have never paid attention to this person before. I didn't watch her dad's reality show; I pass over stories about her in my beloved Page Six. But today, something made me click on the item about her in Best Week Ever...probably the fact that they were making fun of her, but whatever. Follow this link to see the photo that she faked and posted to get the blogs rolling (damn, it worked).

And why does this piss me off? It's photographic evidence that Brooke and I--gasp--think alike. A few years ago in grad school, I took a book production class where the students were responsible for, well, the production of a book--everything from leading to content to cover art. And I was working with the most boring and wholesome girls on the planet. I claim none of the decisions that came to pass, being outvoted at every turn. They chose to name the book Errata, as a play on "erotic," but then refused to do anything remotely risque for the design. Nothing, nada. On the day that cover design options were due, there were about 8 girls who suggested a black background with falling letters (in pink, obvs). Two girls had no opinion. And then there was me. I spent the evening before staging a photo shoot with my friend Ange. The worst of the idea had me in a torn tank top with a black eye, wearing handcuffs, and holding a precinct sign that said "ERRATA."

Damn you, Brooke! You stole my idea! Even if it wound up not being the cover chosen (the only wise choice my classmates ever made, by the way).

I would have loved to link to the photo of my book cover design, but alas, I must have deleted it out of embarrassment. Totally understandable. So instead, I'll leave you with the other contenders. You can write to Ange directly and congratulate her on drawing such convincing fishnet seams.

Toilets always make the awesomest backgrounds. I learned that it photography school.
A sharpie so realistic only your tattoo artist knows for sure.

Do I still own these shoes? Yes. Do I still wear them? Sigh. Yes.

My current favorite typo

2008-08-01T14:34:00.000-05:00

This one is courtesy of a slice of slutty deliciousness known as Bai Ling's blog. In an entry from earlier today, called "I did not expect this," and wrote the following:

"My friend took me to this local place to eat, my god, I was trying to be plight, but I almost throw up, the smell...... how can people eat under this kind of smell that makes you want to vomit, but my friends are really enjoy the home made local food, they ordered all kind of dishes, now I suddenly understand why my American friends came to China with me and they don't eat this and that, they don't like maybe the smell of the place and food, yes I just realized it now, how intresting when nature or them out me in the same spot."

I am going to ignore everything else that is wrong with this 106-word sentence, and focus on the best:

"I was trying to be plight."

Plight!

Oh my god, I love this woman.

Oh my god, where are the towels!?

2008-08-01T11:13:00.001-05:00

I was skulking around on the Slog today, feeling good about not living in Seattle and looking for Dan Savage posts, when I saw this photo. Where the EFF are the beach towels? Those poor '30s gals, forced to walk from the beach to the water without a protective terrycloth muumuu; made to lay on the hot sand with no comforting layer of cotton beneath them. Boo-hoo!

When did beach towels come into vogue? Anyone? Anyone? My very non-extensive Google search didn't turn up that information; I did, however, learn that the towel originated in Turkey.

I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight, thinking of all those poor, poor, towelless women. Boo hoo.

What's going on in my office?

2008-08-01T09:28:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, I couldn't concentrate. It took me 30 minutes to go through one paragraph, and when I reviewed it, I found 3 errors I had missed. That was my cue to find something other than editing to do for the rest of the day. So I settled on one of my favorite activities: cleaning.

I dusted shelves, recycled ream upon ream of paper, backed up old manuscripts, pruned my plants, sharpened my pencils. I updated my calendar, color-coded my sticky notes, made sure all my paper clips were pointing the same way.

But the thing I love best is my new greenhouse. I'm germinating seeds in the second drawer down from the top. In as few as fifteen years, I could have 8 bonsai saplings. Stay tuned.

A small step. This is an interactive blog post. Wheee.

2008-08-01T09:18:00.001-05:00

I wrote last week about not writing honestly, about holding back, all that stuff. There's so much more I could and would like to say, but I never can make myself, because, let's face it: I don't like to be laughed at.

Today, I'm going to take a little step and tell you about my most recent daydream.

See, I never tell people about my daydreams. They're private, they're stupid, and a lot of them are appallingly violent, and it sort of makes me seem less nice (to me, at least). But here's one for you. This is my exercise in bravery. If you feel so inclined, you can leave a daydream for me in the comments.

So suspend all disbelief for a moment, and imagine me, walking the mile home from work with Beethoven's Egmont Overture spilling out of my earphones.

In my daydream, I'm walking across the midway on the far side of campus and I hear an orchestra tuning up. I look to the left, and I'll be damned: there is, indeed, a full orchestra (see? I told you to suspend disbelief) just hanging out in the middle of the midway, looking bored as all hell--all listless scales and limbering exercises and sighs.

I walk over and the director jumps up (or, if I'm feeling saucy, it's Yev Kissin), gets the attention of the orchestra, and hands me the baton. The excitement builds. The scales die down and silence sets in.

I step up to the podium, raise the baton, and lead the orchestra through the Egmont Overture. Toward the end (about 7 minutes in), I get so excited that I start bouncing all over the podium with the energy of the moment and I fall off. (In my defense, I think that would happen to anyone. Seriously.) Undeterred, I jump up, hop back on, and finish the piece--and in the end, it is decided that that was the best ever performance of the Egmont ever given.

Ta da!

It's not the coffee that wakes me up.

2008-08-01T09:10:00.000-05:00

It's the trying to get to it that does.
A few months ago, I bought a charming new thermos called The Bullet. I love it because it has a wide mouth (very important when [a] hand-washing anything that holds dairy and [b] trying to drink coffee as quickly as possible) and because it's shiny. It's lovely. See? How pretty, even though it's kind of spoiled by the soup, in this instance.

Anyway, every morning, I fill up my lovely thermos with iced coffee and cream and skip off to work, where I spend anywhere from five to twenty minutes, cursing, banging, crying, and blistering my hands, trying to get the stupid thing open. When the top twists, it sounds like you're trying to send a greased up pig through a tailpipe. And it grates my ears and I take it, because I know that there's coffee coming soon. Soon....

But not today. My coffee is stuck. The ice in my glass is melted. Not even Ed, champion EA, bike rider extraordinaire, and jar-opening dude can get it open. There's only one thing left for it. I'll take it home, get it open with a wrench and a lot of slamming, and then try my luck again on Monday morning.

I haven't been this excited since the time Mr. Belding called to wish me a happy birthday.

2008-07-24T14:38:00.000-05:00

http://www.avclub.com/content/hater

According to The Hater, according to Vulture, Screech's ghostwriter is penning a TELL ALL!

"Behind the Bell, which Gotham Books preempted from Objective Entertainment's Jarred Weisfeld, promises to detail "sexual escapades among cast members, drug use, and hardcore partying..."

Oh, Screech! Every time I catch a rerun from here on out, I'll be looking into your eyes to catch the mischievous glare that says "I'm biding my time, but it 16 years...baby, I'll be the one in the spotlight!" And don't even get me started on the bundle of hypocrisy that is Elizabeth Berkley.

So yeah, will I be first in line to buy this?
Mmmmyoubetcha.

Will I be embarrassed?
Notatall.

(A testament to my new bravery, perhaps.)

Writing honestly.

2008-07-24T13:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was talking to Heids, and I mentioned that I had transferred my blog over to a new forum, because yes, I have to solicit readers (I mean, I personally can’t understand why people aren’t just drawn to my fabulousness, but they aren’t, so until they see the errors of their ways, I must self-promote). She was a little surprised that I was moving my writing into a more public forum. It hadn’t really occurred to me that that’s what I was doing—I was just sick of myspace, that’s all—but just thinking about it made me squeamish. And nervous. And then ashamed of being squeamish and nervous.

I wish I was a fearless person. I’ve always been shy (though I possess enough idiocy and lack enough self-control that it often comes across as being outgoing and friendly). It’s true of my personality, and it’s true of my writing. I hold a lot back. Not because I’m embarrassed for myself (see sentence above) but because I either don’t want people I’m close to to think less of me or I don’t want people to be dismayed by my descriptions of or reactions to them. And this makes writing difficult, and I’m the poorer for it.

A few years ago, in grad school, I took a memoir class (why someone who is shy about putting the truth on paper would go for memoir is beyond me, but there you have it). My professor, in addition to drawing attention to my overuse of clichés (he had an irritating cartoon figure that he would draw in the margin whenever he would come across one; my early attempts looked like lone star comic strips by the time he was done with them), berated me for not writing what really happened. I excelled at scenery; my monologues and dialogues weren’t too shabby. But writing relationships…I couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it. Not honestly. I always stopped short.

And I still do. You should see the stories and blog entries I write in my head that never make it anywhere near paper. I want to change this one thing about myself so badly. After a lifetime of hiding and playing and carefully crafting and covering, I’m not so sure I’m going to be able to.

Jesus, I make it sound like I’m coving up horribly dark moments in my past. (A gal who needs a plot can dream, right?) The truth of it is that if I do manage to write more honestly, I’ll probably be the only one who will be able to tell, the difference in content will be so slight.

But I’ll feel better for it.

At least, I hope I will. And maybe others will be OK with it, too.

Wrapping up the oldness, part II. 2008.

2008-07-22T12:46:00.000-05:00

9 January 2008:

Pre-Date Mary (TM)

Here's a hypothetical* for you:

5:36 pm: PRE-DATE MARY (TM) rushes through the front door of her apartment, kicking Tesser out of the way in a crazed attempt to make up time she lost during her extra-long commute, since she's supposed to be meeting a guy for coffee at 6:00pm.

5:37 pm: Feeling like shit for kicking Tesser, Mary takes a 6-minute time out to chase her around the apartment cooing apologies while smoking a desperately needed cigarette.

5:43 pm: She curses herself for deciding to wear an extra-fuzzy red sweater to the office on a slightly warmish day, as she uses a lint roller to try to divest her armpits of sweater fuzz.

5:44 pm: Now trying to de-lint the back waistband of her jeans without taking the time to just take them off, she fields a phonecall from her date, who sadly, will be 15 minutes late. Mary sits down to smoke a congratulatory cigarette.

5:48 pm: Finally 80% red fuzz-free, Mary pulls on the date outfit she selected the night before, only to discover that her newly acquired Christmas belly makes the choice...a little ridiculous, and not at all impressive.

5:49 pm: Mary puts fuzzy red sweater back on while muttering "Fuck it."

5:52 pm: While combing baby powder and perfume into her hair, she fields another phonecall from her date, who can't figure out how to get to her apartment. Never mind that every tourist from every far-flung cornfield manages to locate her street; this dude can't do it. Unfortunately, Mary, too, is directionally challenged, and can't tell him how to get there, either, so they decide to meet at the restaurant. At 6:30, now, to allow time for getting lost.

6:15 pm: Mary is feverishly smoking to control her nerves, taking breaks after each one to brush teeth, swill Listerine, and chew gum. Yeah, that'll work.

6:22 pm: Forty-one minutes and seven cigarettes into weeknight date prep, and with one foot out the door, Mary receives a text message saying that traffic is too bad, and coffee will no longer be possible.

6:23 pm: Mary texts DATE STANDBY KATE (TM) the message "What the fuck?" before sitting down to weight the relative merits of pizza delivery versus Thai takeout, and decides on Thai since she has to go buy more cigarettes anyway.

*No, seriously. Totally hypothetical.

15 February 2008:

I see this woman every day.

She bugs the shit out of me, and there's nothing I can do about it, because she's so nice, that I'm sure I'd get yanked straight down into hell if I made her cry (as it is, I'm still going for making fun of her, but I have a stay of execution).

This is the best way I can think of to describe her:

Start with a squat, concrete column

Now dress it in mom jeans

Attach some Billy Idol hair

Then subtract any of the badassness that might have been left in that hairstyle, so you end up with the hairstyle version of this

Toss in a little indeterminate sexuality...

...And the personality of an off-the-clock mime with verbal diarrhea

Phobia.

I don't like sea creatures. I'm kind of gagging right now, just typing this. Sea creatures. Blech. Creatures.

Just the idea that things that look like plants are actually animals. Or things that look, for the most part, inert are, in fact, not.

Not happy. I tried to go snorkeling once, but I swear, a mussel sensed my fear and started chasing me. If you scream underwater and no one is around to hear you, it still makes a sound. Something rather like this: Aaaarrghglubglubglubgahhhashp.

For the record, I also don't like things that look like they might be alive. Like fishing lures. I fucking HATE fishing lures.

Anyway, I just wanted you all to know.

This blog has been brought to you by Kraft Easy Mac, because every time I cook noodles in the microwave and they fan out in that weird formation, it makes me think of sponges, and I get totally skeeved out. ...But not to the point, obviously, where I decide not to eat it. Oh, and I also totally love how it says on the packet "Wanna make 2 packets at once?" I don't know what my favorite part about this question is: the fact that they say "Wanna" instead of "Want to"? Is it that they anticipate your average person's gluttony and desire for cheesy goodness? Or is it the fact that the fine people of Kraft just assume that the core demographic of Easy Mac Extreme Cheese consumers won't be able to do their own math? I'm going to go with (a), I think.

25 February 2008:

Ye Olde Englishe Riddle

"What it is that being borne without life, head, lippe or eye, yet doth runne roaring through the World till it dye?"

This was quite a favorite of Henry VIII. (Wife 5 didn't get it. It's what got her killed.)

Any guesses before the big, classy reveal?

13 March 2008:

Sorry; I forgot.

The answer to the riddle?
A fart.

19 March 2008:

Quote of the day.

Originally, it was going to be "’It’s a lovely cock,’ said Anna-Maria Larsson, the parish vicar," but then I kept reading, and came to this gem:

"Alnö’s weathercock beat off stiff competition . . ."

Seriously? Someone please tell me this is a joke. No writer or editor could possibly be that, well, bad at their job, basically.

Read the entire fabulous story here.

(As an aside, I swear I’ll stop with the potty mouth now, for a while, at least. The next blog I post will be extra-decent to make up for the fact that I’m having dirty mind issues during Holy Week. For shame.)

31 March 2008:

Horrible in a charming sort of way.

Today, I have been heartily enjoying the Web site Postcards From Yo Momma. (It’s either that, or input 300+ pages of corrections on the infamous Green book.)

And I’m mildly appalled at one some mom’s write to their kids. My ma usually sticks to travel itineraries, casserole recipies, financial advice, and links to townhall.org.

Here’s a sampling of what other moms have on their minds:

"I had an experience that I don’t wish to repeat, yesterday. I was drying myself in the shower and said to Dad that something had bitten me You Know Where and was horrifed when he looked and said that it was a tick which he had to remove with tweezers - yuk!

Speak soon but in the meantime huge, huge hugs from Pinny"

Or, there’s this one:

"What’s with the snarkiness about not being able to take your call?
Swank going to your head?

Zen-out dude.

Thanks for the contact , happy you arrived safely and now back to the
pomegranates.

xo, M."

I dunno. So far, the other entries I’ve read have been full of enough hope of future communication from their children that it makes me feel like a bad daughter.

16 April 2008:

Sleep: comments/opinions/professions of undying love/hate mail.

So...I felt like writing and then I couldn't decide on what to write. So I had to settle for rewriting. Here's a short short story in its third incarnation. Any ideas? I have some definite thoughts. Just reading it makes me feel restless. But if anyone wants to add their two cents, I'd welcome the direction!

*****

I'm putting myself to sleep inch by inch—a trick that my roommate taught me during my junior year in college. We had different schedules, she and I. Jessica would, every evening without fail, watch the news, then the first twenty minutes of Jay Leno, seventeen of them in front of the TV, and the last three with her head peeking around the bathroom door as she brushed her teeth and changed into her flannel nightgown. Her coarse braid would swing out and then disappear around the doorjamb as she shifted to spit in the sink or dove behind the door to slip her gown over her head. With the purposeful and content stride that only comes with to-the-second scheduling, she would walk over to the TV and turn it off, then extinguish the hazelnut-scented candle that we weren't allowed to have (her only rebellion in the face of authority). And then she would climb to her bunk and that would be the last I would hear of her for the evening. She always fell immediately, gracefully to sleep. It made me wonder where she learned about—or even why she ever would have needed—psychological sleeping aids.

At seven each morning, her alarm would go off and she would vault the eight feet to the floor, not giving her viola-shaped pillow a second glance, entering the day with the same immediacy and purpose with which she had left it a few hours earlier. I would usually wake up and roll over a few minutes later to see her in front of the TV, which she always watched with headphones so she wouldn't disturb me, catching the first bit of a morning show while drinking her first cup of coffee. I never caught much of this ritual—just a passing glance as I turned over on my way to my last seven hours of sleep before lunch. But as I understand it, once her coffee cup was drained, she snapped the TV back off, filled her travel mug, and went to her studio in the music building to practice before her 8:30 music theory class.

I made it a habit to not be in the room in the evenings—not through any dislike of her, but because college students weren't supposed to be productive and orderly and thoughtful. No, in the evenings, I was usually sitting in the lounge of my dorm building, trying to figure out how to be the opposite of these things and never quite making it. Instead, while other students were off trying to find parties to attend or upperclassmen to help get them into trouble, I was entering ill-advised and ill-informed arguments on Shakespeare, ancient Roman history, and other things I knew absolutely nothing about. I would roll noisily into my room at five in the morning, causing Jessica to flop around in polite frustration from her perch. By the time I got out of bed, usually around two in the afternoon, she would have already attended all her classes and rehearsals and would be either in her studio with another cup of coffee and her viola or in the library with her theory books and a Diet Coke.

I was never so ordered. I was always more restless. And I was always, always, the one who crawled into bed and, immediately bored, started looking for something to do—anything that would tide me over until I started dreaming, which was exhausting, but entertainment enough from five to two. I'm still not ordered. My life isn't regimented. And so now, as then, I lie in bed and put myself to sleep, inch by inch. I start with the toes, or, if I've been terribly neglectful of my spa routines, with the toenails. Sometimes, they're long enough to count on their own. I work up past the smooth insides of my ankles to the scar on my shin that I got playing hide-and-seek when I was eight. By the time I say good night to my knees, my ankles are twitching again. They're like restless preschoolers, they always want another story, five more minutes with the lights on, a cup of water. And so I start back over, I soothe my ankles, thank my toes for setting good examples, and continue, again, toward my hips.

I take care to say goodnight a little differently to different parts of me. I want my fingers to realize they're individuals, too. My calves are told to sleep tight, but I wish my hips sweet dreams. My tummy gets a fond pat, my hair a final run-through with my fingers, and those fingers, a "nighty-night." But tonight, my ankles are having none of it. They're stuck on vacation time, their internal clock doesn't match the digital readout that glows—reprovingly? reminding me of the horrible late hour—in the corner of my room. They're screaming that it's early evening, that there's still plenty of time for them, with the aid of my toes, to curl and dig in the sand they regretfully left behind twelve hours and one flight ago. Not tonight, I tell them, as I patiently start counting back from seventy-nine, willing myself to be asleep by the time I hit twenty-three, my lucky number. It doesn't work. It never works.

Those disobedient children, my misbehaving ankles, wake my belly up. It starts growling, whining. I admonish her gently, reminding her of how, a few short hours before, she'd been so self-conscious under the thin expanse of latex that stretched over her at the beach, clearly showing the yawning dimple of her belly button. No snacks tonight, sweetie. Tomorrow you're going for a jog. I might come along.

There is always tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday, September 30. A new day, a new week, a new month. And for me—I've just turned 30—it is a new decade. Tomorrow I will take my body running. I will take it to church. We will take our journal, dusty with disuse, to the museum, and sit in the room in the Asian arts exhibit that used to be our favorite, ten years ago, and write. But my body is conspiring against me. At seven to five in the morning, I lie in bed, thinking that, if I can just get my ankles to sleep in the next seven minutes, I can still have three and a half hours of sleep. That this should be plenty of rest to start a new life on. That coming back from vacation is the perfect time to carve out a new reality. But this, I can already tell you: in three hours and twenty-nine minutes—it's one past five now, and I've lost the battle and have gone to get my ankles a final cup of water— my hair will decide that it prefers its own scent to the cheap perfume of shampoo. My tummy will want an almond croissant and a latte at noon instead of egg whites on wheat bread at nine, and I'll be too tired to argue with it. My ankles will be grouchy from having been allowed to stay up too late, and I will soothe them by stationing them in front of the TV for four or so hours. And then, several hours later, as I lie in bed in the early morning hours of Monday, October 1—the first Monday, a new day, a new week, and a new month—I will decide that these plans will have to wait for the next time. For the next first day of a new week of a new month of my new decade—sometime in 2017. Perhaps by then my ankles will be in college. And if I'm lucky, they'll be a little more like Jessica than like me.

20 June 2008:

A seriously very uninteresting paragraph or two. Or five.

I am feeling desperately uncreative these days. Even my dreams are failing me. Last night, I dreamed that my legs were covered in freckles, and I looked in the mirror and discovered I was Lindsay Lohan. All this means is that it's time to put Page Six down and back slooooowly away.

Maybe my new apartment will give me a change of perspective. If I stand at the window and crane my neck to a headache-inducing pose, I can see the lake. Then again, if I stand and look out the window normally, I can see a brick wall. Awe-inspiring views, both.

What should I do with my summer? I'm open to any and all suggestions. Invent a life for me!

Le sigh. My deepest apologies to all who read this, for sucking 33 seconds from your life, which you'll never get back. To make up for it, I offer this lone paragraph. Tell me what it is that I remembered, and I'll write a story ending just for you:

"My fingers go a little numb and start twitching and my palms dampen the way they do when I think about running out to the store and buying a pack of cigarettes, even though I was supposed to have quit a few weeks ago. And then my mind goes blank and I can't remember what I had gotten excited about. All I know is that the feeling in my hands lingers behind as evidence that a very thrilling thought about something very illicit had crossed my mind. And then I remember."

Comments:

Bigfoot? Did you remember something about an encounter with Bigfoot?

Posted by Kate on Jun 20, 2008 3:19 PM

Oh, Kate, you read my mind. Here's a paragraph for you:
"...And then I remember. Not ten minutes before, I passed the neighborhood schizophrenic on the way home. Normally, she sits, legs akimbo on the sidewalk in front of Prada, not really bothering anyone unless the sidewalks are crowded enough to force you to play Chinese jump rope to get over her legs and around the corner. She usually doesn't have the energy to even shake her soiled paper cup for change or answer to no one in particular in a voice much above a whisper. But today, she was pacing between the trashcan on the corner and the entrance to Jilly's Piano Bar. From her left hand dangled a clear plastic bag that, dismayingly, appeared to be full of shit. She was twirling it, letting the bag curl and recoil around her finger. And she was shouting. "Yeh-teh." Yeh-TEH!" That's what I had wanted to do...I wanted to Google. What the hell was "Yeh-teh"? And why did the word make my stomach cramp? Was it the way she said it, panicky and backed with a gargle of phlem that seemed to reach deep into her lungs? Or was it the word itself that carried with it a sense of dankness, a quality of despair? Why did I picture moldering cave walls and decaying leaves as that word washed over me?"

There you have it! I'll tell you the rest of the story over whiskeys.

(p.s. Kate, writing this did actually make me wonder: was it YOU who let the weird homeless dude sketch you outside of Barney's?)

Posted by Marybird on Jun 20, 2008 3:40 PM

You remembered that Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's pet elk, while in transit to the home of Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, wandered off, consumed a large quantity of beer, and fell down a flight of stairs.

Posted by Quackenbush on Jun 20, 2008 5:48 PM
[]

Oh Jesus. OK. That's exactly what I remembered.

"...And then I remember. I had forgotten to buy brandy. Stupid elk. Tycho's idiotic pet, named Elsinore, spoiled since its infancy--I clearly remembered Tycho struggling to push the leggy creature in a pram meant for a doll--drank all the beer. the Landgrave's housewarming was beginning in less than an hour, and here I was, unshowered and chainsmoking, palms sweating from my struggle to remember. If that wasn't bad enough, that elk was going to make a fool of me. Everyone knew that the Landgrave was the most insufferably boring noble for miles around; his parties were intolerable without enough alcohol to make him seem interesting--a hefty quantity, I can tell you. Fortunately, the elk had been off brandy ever since Tycho ordered 5 barrels of it for Elsinore's first birthday, though they never got to the party; Elsinore smashed and drank each one in turn until, unable to take another sip of alcohol, he stumbled over to the fountain in the middle of Tycho's garden to get a drink of water and promptly fell in. Lush. So brandy it was. If I hurried, I'd have enough time to place the order, get the wagon and remove Elsinore from the bottom of the Landgrave's stairs, where he was currently sleeping off his bender, then take the wagon to pick up the barrels of brandy. I hitched up my skirts and got to work..."

Posted by Marybird on Jun 23, 2008 8:15 AM
[]

Genius! "Push The Leggy Creature In A Pram Meant For A Doll" is going to be the name of a cd, I promise.

24 June 2008:

A short story you all must read.

Don't worry: it's not mine.

It's Haruki Murakami's, from The Elephant Vanishes.
And I'm recommending it based on three lines:

1. "After which a vast and empty silence, warmthless as overbleached underwear, was all that remained."

2. "She'll be on her way with groceries and a blindfold."

3. "'Say, can I touch your tummy?' I asked her. 'Later,' she said."

Mmmm. So go read "The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds." It's short and delicious.

20 July 2008:

Blogging to commence elsewhere.

The plan is to move all my old entries over to marybird.blogspot.com, and, you know, keep writing.

Wrapping up the oldness, part I. 2007.

2008-07-22T12:22:00.000-05:00

1 January 2007:

Ten years? Five years?

Every few months I decide that it is a good idea to repost old journal entries here. And a few seconds after I make this decision every few months, I mortify myself by reading what I had written the week--the year--the decade before and decide to leave it alone. But as a special New Year's torture, I think I'll share. I like to think of it as validation of sorts: I don't have to freak about changing, because a quick leafing of pages through 15 years of scribbles will show you that, as a rule, I never do.

From January 18, 1997. The Official Beginning of Running Scared from Mom:
"I intend to go and fill in the past few weeks, which are blank because I didn't want to take my journal home. Knowing my recent additions, I would have been far too nervous [to take my journal home and fill it up with various nefarious college-type activities and then leave it lying around where my mom might find and read it...I'm assuming is what I meant]. I just contracted a huge headache trying to smoke up. I think God is trying to tell me it's time to quit." [And then I kick off with a group-written poem that opens with the line "Neil Diamond and tuna fish." I wish I was making that up.]

From January 1, 2002. Funny. This also almost describes June 2005:
"I suppose in a perfect world I would have been able to quite FORZA, move, and find a new job with no assistance. As it is, my mom packed, my dad gave me money, and Mark supplied a rent-free roof over my head." . . . "My name is Mary. And this is my life. I work in a coffee shop and live in my brother's attic."

From December 31, 2002. Riiiiiiight. The Last Time:
"Had a crush on The Minister this year. Also had a crush on N., which, incidentally, was the first and last time I tried internet dating."

From December 2003. My Standards Are Right Where I Left Them:
"Heidi set me up on a blind date with this guy named Larry--Larry--who sells knives on the Internet, and he totally brushed me off. On my way out to dinner tonight, 10 days after our little date, he called to see if I was working, because he was on his way to Starbucks and he thought it'd be bad form if he saw me there and hadn't called. Ugh. If this is any indication, 2004 will be a disappointment."

From January 2005. Uncharacteristic Optimism. Before the Fall:
"This year is off to a bizarre start. Full of anxiety and indecision. So you know what? I'm going to stop. Because actually, things are going really well. I have a job at Houghton Mifflin...yay for me! I'm dating a really nice, smart guy, and I have great friends. In may, I'll have my Master's. All I need to do is quit smoking and things'll be completely fabulous. Can I just take a quick moment here to complain...?"

Hmmm. I have no comment on my own life. That kind of hurts. On the plus side, I hope this helps all you out there with your insomnia issues. Just read once before bedtime.

I think this says it all.

This is absolutely my favorite photo from the Gehl Family Christmas. It's fucking priceless. There's the rundown of pre-shutter click events: Mark's dog Shilo got up and wandered away, so my niece Megan got up and wandered after him. My dad ran after her, and my dog Abbey used the opportunity to escape to a room that didn't contain toddlers or 18 month old, 80-pound puppies. Grandma, as always, is spot-on, while my mom and Melissa are trying to out-mom one another in a baby-calling competition. And Jim, Mark, and I, in a moment of pure sibling connnectivity, are sporting the exact same expressions--waiting for the floors to open and swallow us whole, reliving us of the tedium of it all.

This photo is as close as we ever got to the real thing. It still looks like Mark is considering ditching his puppy and running out. He's sloooowly backing away.

Next week, if you guys are lucky, I'll shower you with photographic evidence of the cooking-decorating war between me and Mark. But since he kicked my ass, I probably keep it to myself.

20 January 2007:

Six degrees of fifteen-minute celebrity

On the train today, the woman sitting in front of me was talking on her cell phone. Her mother, it would seem, never taught her the merit of using her inside voice. So much the better for me, since the book I was reading was a little too mind-bending for a Monday evening, so I just sat back and listened.

This woman, it would seem, was friends with a woman who is in the finals for Nickelodeon's World's Funniest Mom competition. (Let me take a moment to say that I would have been a lot more scornful, but sadly, I've heard of this competition, which is pathetic in and of itself.) She went on and on talking about how exciting it was to know her and how fabulous it would be if she won and--this is my favorite part--how when she was growing up and the funny mom contender (FMC) made fun of her all the time, she now understands that the FMC was just practicing for the honor that would one day be hers. Even now, the woman declared, she had to remind herself that FMC never meant to hurt her--that she's just funny.

I enjoy little brushes with noncelebrity. I'm going to put this moment up there with my the appearance of my friend's friend on Judge Judy. Actually, this particular friend is a twofer. Not only was her friend on JJ (as the defendant, being sued by her sister for nonpayment of rent on a trailer without electricity that the two were sharing with their boyfriends and assorted children), this friend's sister was called by Jerry Springer's people and asked to be on a show featuring strippers and their families. How's that for fabulous?

It's all in the name.

A few years back in grad school, there was a girl in my design class. Well, there were 11 girls in my design class, but this one, in particular, named Regan, is who this story is about. Regan was this poor, kind of clueless, intensely annoying young woman. You know: the type whose ears always peek out of their lank hair, who spells "fairies" "faeries" or some other fanciful, otherworldly way, who still wears scruchie socks and waves her hand rapidly in the air in class as though, after 25 years, the teacher will finally, finally call on her.

The sememster project was to design a book, cover to cover. First of all, it's always a bad idea to try to get 11 girls to do anything together. But it's torture when Regan is involved--and worse, wants to take the lead. She busied herself every week trying to get cover designs featuring unicorns and fairies--excuse me, ye olde faeries--past the rest of us.

By mid-semester, she seemed to realize that we weren't going to let that fly, so she concentrated on the one thing she had total control over: her short story. We were all to supply our own writing and artwork to make up the actual book part of the book. She had written a picture book (I know that's shocking) and had trimmed it down to fit the alloted word count. No problem there, except we all had to hear about it. God, by the end of the sememster, even Lisa, our professor, couldn't keep her cool upon proclaiming that Regan wanted--no, insisted--on using the nom de plume "Violet Blue." Not that she was getting any argument, but she was so ready for one. One class, she made it known that she would only answer to "Violet," and she hoped it wouldn't be a problem.

Now, we didn't have a problem with it, but I now realize that Violet Blue might be pissed if she ever knew that Regan stole her name. This Violet Blue might be pissed, too. Of course, I didn't know that either of these people existed until I got my copy of Best Women's Erotica 07. And for a moment, I had a heart attack thinking that Regan had finally become Violet Blue--though a very different version from the persona she had projected during design class.

I quickly reasoned that this could never be the case, but am left with the overwhelming sadness that so many (and yes, three is so many) people thought "Violet Blue" would be a good choice for a stage/work name. That's a tragedy.

25 January 2007:

My to-do list.

In general, I like to pretend that I know what I'm doing. It makes my life so much easier and does wonders for my self-esteem.

In particular, for at least eight hours a day, I like to pretend that I'm a knowledgable editor. I run through documents, confidently changing commas to em dashes and colons to semicolons, secure in the belief that if I'm making a change, it MUST be right.

Today, for whatever reason, is not my day. The project I'm working on now is turning me into a nervous, second-guessing, grammar-challenged editor. Is it Works Progress Administration or Work Progress Administration? And does it matter, since it's referred to as WPA? Workers' Association or Workers Association? Should I let this guy quote W. E. B. Du Bois quoting Frederick Douglass or should I make him go find the primary source for the Douglass quote?

This has been my day. Riveting, I know. Nail-biting tension all around. I have been out of my office hunting down answers from senior editors and CMS contributors more today than in the previous three months.

And that is why I have ammended my to-do list. Until six minutes ago, it featured all sorts of fun things like "TOCs to TXM" and "CIP data to KJT." Now, all that's gone. In it's place:

Read entire fucking Chicago Manual of Style.

I think I'm going to leave for the day before I fuck anything else up.

8 February 2007:

So...this was completely out of character.

I called my mom the other afternoon, because it seemed like a better idea than working. She picked up the phone and was obviously in very high spirits. I asked what was up, and she said, "Oh, I just got back from visiting the Clinton Presidential Library."

And I had absolutely no response to that. I said, "Seriously?" because such an excursion would have been completely out of character. One of my mom's favorite pastimes--beyond reading updtates on redstate.org, watching Fox News, and managing my finances--is telling stories from around the neighborhood about how Bill's coke connection used to live in such-and-such a house, and so-and-so down the street knew the guy who ended up in the Arkansas River in connection with a Clinton scandal and Hilary's notorious sailor-speak and all that stuff.

One of my favorite all-time mom anti-Clinton moments was when a woman from the Library called. This was years ago, when Clinton had just left office and planning for the Library was still underway. My mom had just purchased two chairs from a dealer that were replicas of the chairs that sit in the Oval Office on either side of the fireplace. Naturally, she positioned them on either side of our family room fireplace and never misses a moment to show visitors a photo of Ronald Regan sitting in the Oval office in the (nearly) selfsame chairs. Anyway, the maker of these chairs no longer manufactures them, and according to the buyer; my mom was purchasing the only pair on the market at the time. Sure enough, a week later, a woman from the Library called her to ask about the chairs. The Library wanted to recreate the Oval Office, and they were hoping that my mom would be honored to part with the chairs--for twice what she paid for them--and do her part for the Clinton Library.

My mother's response? "I'll tell you what," she told the woman on the phone, "Why don't you give me a call in a few years when you've switched sides and are working towards outfitting a Republican's Presidential Library. If Bush needs those chairs, I'll just straight-out donate them to you, but there's no way in hell Clinton is getting my chairs. No way."

And that, ladies in gentlement, is why I was thrown for such a loop that she (a) went to see the trailer on stilts (see the photo below if you don't believe me. I mean, honsestly, like people don't make enough fun of Arkansas? That's the architecture someone chose to immortalize Clinton and his legacy with? Ugh.) and (b) came back in a good mood. But then again, there could be a logical explanation. Her sister and one of her brothers were in town, so for all I know, they stood at the back of the tour and made fun of everything they saw, like a couple of junior high school kids might. That seems very likely, indeed.

12 February 2007:

The packing list.

Whenever I go home to Arkansas, I come back with at least twice as much as when I left. Usually, this is my own fault. Moving a million times and living in studios means that 80 percent of my belongings are scattered throughout my parents' house--in the attic, under beds, pressed into service in the kitchen, what have you.

This time, I vowed to be different. I drew up a list of what to take back (one book, four mugs) so that even if I was blinded by the glory of all my crap, I would have something to ground me. It didn't work. And it wasn't my fault this time. OK, that's a lie, but it wasn't totally my fault. I left with one bag and came back with three. And since I'm sure you're dying to know, here's a sample.

What I meant to bring back:
one book
four mugs

Some of what came back with me:
one book
a lot of yarn
inkwell
embosser (because that's an essential item, right?)
decorative wooden bowl
paper fans
approximately 25 pounds of frozen meat (this was not my doing)
50 packs of crystal light (again, not my doing)
a pair of out-of-style, 7-year-old jeans that are 4 sizes too small
fountain pen display (why do I even own something like that)
8 pairs of chopsticks (because the 10 pairs I have in Chicago aren't enough)

OK--I have no one to blame but myself over the state of bags so heavy that I missed my bus stop because I couldn't get down the aisle with them. That's just sad. And for what? An inkwell? Fuck it--it's a pretty inkwell, damn it.

Maybe I'll do better next time. Well, I kind of have to, since I can't afford a one-bedroom apartment and there's no space left in my studio.

13 February 2007:

A command decision.

I have decided that I am going to collect vintage kimonos. That's all. I just thought you should know, because if you ever want to give me one, you can rest assured that I won't donate it to Goodwill. Instead, I'll hang it on my wall and get it down every once in a while to dust it and twirl around in it.

So this was depressing.

I was home over Christmas, you know, and we all laughed at how Abbey was going deaf. Because that's not funny at all...I mean, when my dad lost his hearing, we didn't make fun of him. Much.

When I was home last weekend, I discovered that Abbey is no longer going deaf--she just is. You can stand right behind her and shout "bad dog" or "treat?" or whatever the fuck you want and she won't hear a damn thing, and then if you go to pet her, you totally freak her out. It's really fucking sad. Poor puppy.

Ah, hope that made your evening a little cozier!

20 February 2007:

Let the spinning commence!

The first of my kimonos arrived from Japan today! It kind of smells like an old man, so I don't think I'll be wrapping myself up in it after baths any time soon unless, of course, I develop a...fondness for that sort of thing. But it still is excellent for spinning. And plus, it will air it out. Or at least it would if my apartment didn't smell like an ashtray. So it'll smell like an old chain-smoker. There are worse things.

22 February 2007:

A moment of silence for Anna.

Most of you have undoubtedly heard me talk, at some point during the last 18 years, about Anna McGrosso. I began piano lessons with her right before my 11th birthday and continued until I was 20. She was wonderful--charismatic, strong, ridiculously talented, and had the utmost faith in her students' ability. And she was my friend, and the only person I cried over having to leave when I left for Hope. Not even my parents made that short list. My last "lesson" was more of a visit. I was in college, and my parents no longer lived in Bloomington. I can't even remember why I would have been in town, just that it wasn't possible to go to Bloomington and not visit Anna. I went to her home, and she poured us each a Coke, clucked over the state of my too-long fingernails, and we played Chopin and talked about school. The only worrisome thing on that trip was that she kept calling me Natalie. A few years later, her husband John tracked me down in Japan to tell me that Anna had been placed in a nursing home because of her Alzheimer's. We traded a few letters, which dwindled to Christmas cards, which dwindled to nothing. But tonight, my dad e-mailed me a letter he had received from John about a memorial service for Anna, who passed away over the summer.

So if you will all do me the small favor of an air-kiss and "Bravo" for Anna McGrosso--teacher, mentor, friend, and hero. And the most ass-kickingly stylish 80-year-old woman I have ever known.

8 March 2007:

Sad, sad moments in the life of an editor.

1. I noticed that I have a huge callous, right where the palm of my hand meets my wrist, from pivoting my hand from the keyboard to the mouse.

2. In my quest to find out whether the "g" in "Pythian games" was an initial cap or no, I dropped an enormous encyclopedia on my foot and haven't been able to wear a normal shoe since. And, just so you know, the "g" is indeed lower case.

3. I was reading the Q&A on the Chicago Manual of Style Web site (which in and of itself should be an entry)...

4. As I was saying, I was reading the Q&A, and my internal response to the CMoS expert's assertion that chapters 16 and 17 of the book are, ahem, "where the real copy editors hang out" was: "Yessss! That's right, bitches! Punkass fake copy editors. How you like me now?" (Obviously, my book was open to 17.250: Citing Classical Greek and Latin References. Duh.)

And those three events of the past week made me shed a tear for my life in an alternate universe where, I don't know, I'm cool?

(Here's a little note for all the editors out there who are about to make fun of me for using CMoS instead of CMS. This is the inside track: at the U of C, it's the CMoS. Take it to the streets.)

13 March 2007:

So that's what happens when you mess up.

Yesterday, I was sitting in my office minding my own business when my boss and one of the acquisitions editors came knocking. Now, my boss scares the shit out of me. She makes me cry. It's terrifying. So when she came through the door and asked--nay, commanded--me to open up the files of the philosophy book that I had finished editing the week before, I had to stop myself from apologizing on the spot for--I don't know, whatever I had messed up, being born, using a green instead of a blue pen, whatever. I opened the files and turned the keyboard over to her, and she scrolled through the chapters, and then an amazing thing happened. She wheeled around on the acquisitions gal instead of me.

Apparently, the author whose book I had just finished was extremely unhappy with my work. And that's really embarrassing and disheartening, but dude, at least my boss didn't come in to slap me around; instead, she defended me, which has never happened before and which kicked ass, pretty much.

I'm still waiting to see how this all plays out. The author actually asked the acquisitions gal if he could resubmit a manuscript instead of take into account the changes I had introduced. Ouch. Then again, the man has published 15 books. In all that time, did no one ever explain to him the glory of the "stet"?

The horrible thing here is that I was so nervous about this book--I know nothing of philosophy and this author has a very good reputation--that I delivered the lightest edit I could. There were pages upon pages with not so much as a comma change, and even so the author thought I used too heavy an editorial hand. And in my queries, I practically tripped over myself to say "no worries." An example: {AU: Is the change from "experiency" to "experience" correct? "Experiency" is a word I am not familiar with, and I could not find it in any of the three unabridged dictionaries I checked in, but I do not wish to change your meaning. If "experiency" is indeed the correct term, please verify the spelling and, if you believe your audience may require an explanation, please provide one. Thank you!} See? That's just silly.

Well, it's probably past time for me to email the acquisitions gal and see what's going on.

16 March 2007:

The (unexciting) denouement.

I'll finish this work-bitch story, and then I'll stop with the editing anecdotes for a while, I promise.

When I last left you, I had received word that I had one extremely unhappy philosopher on my hands. I have since gotten the redlined manuscript back; it is basically one big red X with a couple of No!! No!! No!!'s sprinkled in for good measure, and a stern warning to stop introducing errors into his work. So that really sucked. I've tried to deep breathe my way out of the stress of doing an unacceptable job (to some--my boss still is under the impression that the author is crazy, and if my boss herself wasn't the teensiest bit unhinged I'd take a lot more comfort in that), but it's apparently not working, since last night I dreamed that I verbally assaulted a hapless mother of three in a bar and got the cops called on me.

So, that's the rest of the story. He didn't get the new manuscript editor as he requested, and I get to suffer the thankfully brief indignity of hitting the "reject all changes" button in Microsoft Word. The End.

Stay tuned, though: this weekend I'm teaching myself how to cook Japanese food and forcing the product on some ususpecting citizens. I'm sure hilarity will ensue.

17 March 2007:

Sounds like those people need a coffee shop...who's with me?

Perhaps I'll move to Anderson, Alaska, for the big land-grab. They're giving away plots of land up there as long as you promise to build a house on it within two years. And it's not totally in the middle of nowhere. There's a gas station, like, twenty miles away. It's an oddly appealing idea. I could carry on my family's homesteading tradition. I mean, there's been a gap of...90 or so years since the last person in our family decided to head into the wilderness, but maybe the time is right for revival. I'll take my espresso machine and a lot of sweaters. See, I already have everything I need. Oh, and a hammer. Can't forget that.

5 April 2007:

I leave the adventurous dancing to my friends.

Being an adult is kind of cool, because instead of your mom signing you up and paying money for all sorts of shit that you're not sure you want to do, you get to do it to yourself. And that's exactly what I did. I didn't do it like Mel, who signed up for pole dancing. Or like V, who does belly dancing. No, I went the four-year-old weenie route: straight back to ballet. When I was little, that shit was kind of fun. But then, when I was little, the thought of putting on an outfit that, head to toe, is composed of 95% lycra didn't terrify me. And then they make you stand in front of floor length mirrors and get a crazy Russian lady to poke you in the belly, just for added torture. It was awesome.

In other news, I made some really gross macaroni and cheese today.

And in final news, I finally gave up waiting for my long-promised Mitch Hedberg CDs to show up in the mail (since, ahem, Earl Barham of Cambridge, MA, doesn't myspace, I have no problem calling him out by name on his failing. If you want his street address so you can bombard him with disappointed mail on my behalf, let me know), I finally broke down and bought them myself. One should never laugh so hard about a joke revolving around ants with no legs looking like snowmen. That shit just isn't funny. Until Mitch says it. Or said, I guess.

6 April 2007:

It's official: I just died a little bit.

No, my toes didn't turn black.

BUT. I'm reading this book called "The Year of Yes" by Maria Dahvana Headley, wherein a woman says yes to every person who asks her out for an entire year. I dislike this book because it's similar to the memoir that I wanted to write, but her date stories are far better than mine. I dislike it because she's the type of artistic, literary-snob playwright that I can't stand (but a therapist would tell me I'm just jealous of, and would probably be correct in his assessment). I can't stand her name dropping and title dropping, and I can't stand that I keep picking the book up to find out about her next awful date.

And I don't like it because she writes like she's looking so far back in her life, waxing nostalgic about her youthful antics, and she's my age. The woman is 30 if she's a day, writing about things that happened only eight years ago (for reference, as she was getting her toes sucked clean on a NYC subway during a hotter-than-hell day in June or tying a see-through scarf around her tits and dancing with Marilyn Manson, I was most likely cornered against a blackboard, being clawed at by 11-year-old Japanese girls who wanted to know all about my cup size and gun collection. I was definitely the wrong kind of 22.)

But you know what really tops it? What really pisses me off? At the end of this little adventure this woman became the step-aunt of Benjamin McKenzie (whose uncle--side bonus--is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright). THAT pisses me off. A lot. It just seems really unfair.

I meant to.

I intended to write much more about the ballet class experience the other day, but I got distracted by Mitch Hedberg. I was reminded a few seconds ago when I mentioned my boobs in the previous post, so even though it's overkill to write about them twice in one day (or, probably, twice, ever), what the hell.

It didn't occur to me until a few days before my first class that I had never had to bother with undergarments when dancing before. The last time I was into ballet, the only thing I had to bind up were my feet. So I did a little research and bought what quite a few people swore was a godsend of a dancer's bra, and even though I was dubious about the S-M-L sizing, according to the reviews, it worked for other curvy dancers out there, so I placed my order.

The package arrived a few hours before my first class, and I eagerly tore into it (I had also ordered a slightly more chaste leotard; the one I had was originally bought for Kate's themed birthday party last year, and I didn't think it would be quite appropriate for a dance class occurring before 11pm at night).

My first thought on ripping the bra from it's box was, you're fucking me, right? The thing was tiny. Garter-with-shoulder-straps tiny. But hell: maybe it was really stretchy or something. With a fair amount of twisting and minimal riiiiiping sounds, I managed to get the stupid thing on. On looking in the mirror, I immediately started laughing. No wonder that hadn't worked; I had put it on backwards, with the very tiny, not-meant-to-support-anything backstrap in front. I went to turn it around, and started laughing harder. I had put it on the right way the first time, after all.

The big plus side? It was a fuck of an ego boost--just what I needed before pouring myself into a leotard to go make a fool of myself.

So sorry about that chest intensive post. Next time I do something like that, I'll put the disclaimer at the top.

13 April 2007:

They're trying to alter my memories.

I went downstairs to the little cafeteria at work today to buy some gum (I've had a weird coffee-spicy chinese food-cigarette-but damn no gum affliction three days running this week, and I finally gave in). And I settled on the Juicy Fruit because it's a fab standby and I've gotten so caught up in Orbit and those weird Trident melon fusion flavors that I thought a return to normalcy might be a good thing.

So I was standing there trying to refrain from breathing on people (stupid Camel/General Tso) while unwrapping the gum. I peeled back the silver foil and Arrrrgh'ed in horror (which also totally ruined my not-breathing-on-people policy, which in turn, I'm sure, horrified the guy I was talking to at the time. So sorry about that). It was yellow!

Yellow!

When did Juicy Fruit turn fake-banana-flavor yellow? What the hell!? I was seriously upset by this turn of events (but not to the point where I felt the need to not chew the gum on principle). Juicy fruit is not yellow. It's supposed to be the color of plaster of paris, bastards. That's so mean. First you slap filters on Pall Malls, and now you turn Juicy Fruit yellow, thereby eradicating two of the few nostalgia jump-off points I had for my grandpa. If you go fucking with Lava Soap, I'm coming after you.

I feel like I need a piece of Chewell's gum and some vanilla ice cream with Magic Shell butterscotch topping to get back to my happy place. Thanks for nothing.

19 April 2007:

Mochi.

Tomorrow, my book group is discussing a book by Haruki Murakami, so I decided to theme-bake the treats. Mochi! The Japanese Food of Celebration! Sure.

The last time I saw mochi made was in the special education classroom in one of my schools in Japan. If those kids could turn out perfectly yummy mochi, so could I, damn it.

I have never been so, so wrong in my life.

I picked out two recipes: a blueberry baked mochi cake and chocolate mochi. The cake isn't too bad. But then, for something that contains a can of condensed milk, 2 cups of sugar, and a cup of butter, it's a fuck of a lot worse than it should be. All that rich fatty goodness can't quite disguise the dense, flat blahness of the rice flour.

Next up was the chocolate mochi, which was the real fun. Basically, it's rice flour (if you want to do this the old fashioned way, you have to get a huge wooden mortar and pestle, a whole lotta rice, and a guy who will yell "hiya!" over and over as he pounds it into a glutinous fucking mess), melted chocolate, and water. You mix this together into a globby...glob, shit I don't know, then spoon it out into potato starch and roll it around. In the end, you'll have a chewy chocolate-flavored rice ball. Yum.

This, of course, did not happen. I mean, I have sticky blobs sitting on potato-starched wax paper all over my kitchen (I also have globs on my clothes, on my microvave, on the floor...), so that part worked. The taste part didn't quite come together. They taste...how should I put this? Foul. And I have officially been bested by a special ed class in mochi-cooking. On the plus side, it was kind of fun rolling warm little balls of rice dough. I enjoyed that part way more than I should have.

Oh, and ps, I also tried to make rice balls stuffed with umeboshi, wherein I burned my hands and learned that the very smell of nori is enough to send me scrambling from the kitchen toward an open window.

So if anyone reading this is going to book group tomorrow night...Sorry!

20 May 2007:

The rogue e-mail.

Do you ever play that game where you accidentally send an e-mail to the wrong person? That is, you send it to a person you have a crush on, but the content of the message is obviously for someone with either the same or a very similar name (for believability in case you get called out on it...oh, but the names are right next to each other in my address book...shit!). Then you sit around and wait and hope that the "unintended" recipient writes you back and thus, you have found a way to talk to the person without, um, looking like you actually wanted to. Funny accident, that.

As you can no doubt tell, I know this game. I've played this game. It's been a long time, but...no, seriously. Wednesday was ages ago, now.

No, I bring this up because this morning, there was a message in my inbox from a guy who I had really hoped would never ever think of me again. And I'd like to think that it was an honest-to-god mistake, a misclick of a mouse button. But you'd have to be thick as shit to make that mistake and not realize it, and since this is the second e-mail that has gotten, um, misdirected to me (though the intended recipient has been different in both cases), I'm more inclined to think that he's playing the game. Of course, I also like to think this because it flatters me in a creepy way, but that's neither here nor there.

(Speaking of creepy, Crispin Glover is in town doing some weird movie/music/stage show...that's neither here nor there, either, but I thought I'd mention it.)

Anyway, some of you will remember this creepy guy (not Crispin, but the one who emailed me) as the illustrator from last summer who got drunk at my quitting smoking party and fondled my friend's roommate before telling her that he and I were in a relationship, I just didn't realize it. And now that his name is back in my inbox, I'm not happy about it. But I'm too lazy to call and inflict this story on people separately...because it's not that interesting and because my throat hurts from inhaling half a week's cigarettes in 7 hours. So here I am.

He attached some artwork (illustrator, that cool kat) and asked "Mary" (not me, but Bizzaro Mary) out for lunch. So was I supposed to e-mail him and point out his "mistake" and save him from disappointing Mary? I sure as hell hope not. Just seeing his name left me with the irrepressible need to exfoliate myself to get every last lingering cootie off me. Ugh. The fucking willies. That can't be a good sign.

I'm sure I have other news that isn't nearly so...newsless. I'll do that in a sec.

20 May 2007:

Mary's blog.* *Now with 14% more news.

Blah.
I'm not feeling terribly writerly, but I am feeling the need to update. So here's the short version, which is no doubt good for everyone:

My parents won't stop visiting.

My brother graduated from med school.

I went to an insane facialist who insulted my pores then ripped all the hair off my face.

I have a mint plant.

I'm hoping that my friend's tattoo, which she got at the bachelorette party I threw her, doesn't outlast her marriage. I think she'll be fine, though.

Ever since watching "The Science of Sleep" I've been having very odd dreams featuring Mexicans and this guy named Greg that I went to high school with.

The girl at the Bobbi Brown counter also had a few unkind words to say about my pores.

21 May 2007:

As sure a sign of spring as any that I'm aware of.

What's that? Me signing up for online dating. That's right, boys and girls: spring is here, and I'm bringing the humiliation back. Why? Because watching a man power eat two bowls of vegetarian chili and a basket of onion rings with such zeal that the waitress has to bring a bottle of club soda over to clean the food flecks off his shirt is an experience that should be lived over and over again. And because I fear for the constitution of my friends, I'm willing to take on this challenge and share it all with you.

Good times, my friends. Good times.

In other news, I can't bring myself to return "The Science of Sleep" to Blockbuster, so you all must watch it so I have someone to talk to about it, because I'm starting to feel weird laughing about the goat on the cliff to myself.

24 May 2007:

Already worth the price of admission.

Want to see the slice of suburban hotness who wants me/best profile photo ever?

That sound you hear is me licking my lips. The next sound you'll hear is me calling the salon to book a waxing appointment. That dude's armpit is making me itch.

This boy gets points for creativity...but he won't get anything else.

From the manhunt Web site:

"In my wildly misspent youth, I once asked a young woman I went a-courtin' how she preferred to approach the act of lovemaking. While I couched the question in the most gentle of terms possible, that overlooked the question's innate coarseness. It's the kind of question a child can ask, I suppose, of another child. However, I was speaking to a woman. Her velvet response: "Like turtles." Those two words had a much better chance of making me a man than any enactment.

"So, too, the love song. I prefer my love songs to be spun from molasses or cold-smoked over smoldering hickory, often tasted with tongue in cheek. No one is saved; no one completes another. Two adults stumble in, fumble about in the dark, and then tumble out just as fast to a husky twang or an undeniable bass line. Make it primal, sure, but make it smart.

"I'm a preternaturally old soul to start with, but I feel it moreso now. I don't remember what it's like to be the boy in the story. That lad preferred the chase as long as the landing lights were on brightly and the lass was guiding him into the gate quite clearly. No suspense; no waiting.

"Now? I long for the long hello and the longer goodbye. Repartee worthy of Hepburn and Tracy. Lovers well before the lovemaking. Two stumbling, fumbling, tumbling fools together savoring the moments before they're memories.

"And if they're lucky, they get to make turtle soup before they go."

*****

Ok.

13 June 2007:

The door was open.

There is an abandoned church in Hyde Park that I walk by on a daily basis during my lunch hour. That building is the only thing that takes me down that particular street. It looks so grand, but only because it is surrounded by homes and apartment buildings. I don't know when or why it closed--just that in the two years I have been in that neighboorhood, it's doors have been padlocked. The windows are all broken, the wooden doors are splintered, and the facade is more patches of paint and graffiti than anything else. I have always wanted to go in. I love abandoned spaces--I imagine they're all dignified history and loneliness. Today, I walked down that street, and the middle door was open. Naturally, I charged right up the stairs, and then I wimped out and stood in the vestibule trying to decide if I should be in that space or not (I mean, obviously I shouldn't have been, but I felt like I was breaking rules on a completely different level by being there). Someone was working in the back; I could hear the saws. More than anything, the Catholic schoolgirl in me didn't want to get caught out. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of tetanus. You know. In the end, I picked my way through the shattered glass and wood fragments on the floor and made my way up one of the two grand staircases to either side of the vestibule. The wood was rotting and thick with moss. It was more like climbing a hill, actually. The skylights had caved in and light was streaming through. There was nothing up top to see, really--just a floor so bowed with age and moisture that it almost mirrored the dome of the church's roof. So I just stood there and relished the loneliness, because somehow, when it's tempered by age and neglect, it seems sweeter and more nostalgic than the garden variety emptiness I can get any day of the week at home.

Then I busted ass out of there before the dude with the saw came up front and turned me into an urban legend.

12 July 2007:

Mary's Sentence of the Day

The following is a sentence that, because of my post-lunch food coma, will be making it through the editorial process in its original state:

"Only circular motion is capable of endless repitition without a reversal of direction, and rotatory motion is prior to linear because what is eternal, or at least could have always existed, is prior, or potentially prior, to what is not."

26 July 2007:

Someone obviously missed a day of healthcare follow-up phone call training.

Here's a word that you never EVER EVER use when calling someone to inform them of medical test results. A brief transcript, if you will:

Me: Manuscript editing, this is Mary.

Wade from U of C Hospitals: Hi, Mary, this is Wade calling for Dr. Joyner from U of C Hospitals.

Me [best customer service voice ever, as though it will improve my chances of health]: Oh, hiiiiiii, Wade. I left a message earlier about the results of a biopsy.

Wade: Yes. [Hesitates] Unfortunately. . .

[I'm sure he continued talking, but since I was passed out on the floor, this is where the official transcript ends.]

OK, so I didn't pass out, but Jesus. Who in the hell uses the word "unfortunately" to lead into a question about the correct spelling of my name? That's right: no test results: UNFORTUNATELY, he misspelled my name and couldn't look them up. Fucker. Thanks for the heart attack.

Anyway, the actual results were much less horrifying than the lead-in phone conversation. I'm fine. Just a hypochondriac, it would seem. But since all of you within talking distance so heartily enjoyed my inadvertant Marlee Matlin impersonation of late last week, I have no regrets in having someone core out a portion of my tounge. It's all for the greater good of your entertainment.

28 August 2007:

How a crappy day apologizes for being such a shit.

It's been a pretty underwhelming week so far. There's been a fair amount of getting yelled at, a fair amount of insomnia, a fair amount of stress. My parents are arriving tomorrow, which means that I'm running around tonight, washing walls, laundering sheets, and hiding things...and going to the grocery store to make sure there's more than 23 yogurts and some old Italian dressing in my fridge.

The cashier had run up all my groceries and asked how I would like to pay, to which I said, "Cred......uh...cash, please." My credit card was nowhere in sight, which is very unlike me (except for that time that I went with Kate and Ronnie to the tattoo parlor). So I dash out of the store, doing my little internal freakout (with a small break to stop at Walgreens and get some exfoliator), I run home, I dump all my groceries on the floor, and I proceed to rip apart my newly cleaned apartment. Forty-five minutes later, I find the card, covered with olive oil in the bottom of my garbage. As I'm washing it off and throwing up a little in the process, I remember that I didn't put my groceries away, so I grab the bags and dump THOSE out on the floor, revealing a bottle of champagne and a nice hunk of brie that I most certainly did not purchase.

So thank you, day. I accept your friggin apology.

4 September 2007:

An assault on my senses.

So it's been a busy week. The last time I left you, I was dizzily sipping cheap champagne and re-throwing away the garbage that I had strewn around my apartment. Since then, my parents have come and gone, and I have been to Minnesota and back for my friend Ayako's wedding. (The story of the "party bus" to potentially follow....It involves painted parrots and a Jimmy Buffet reject, so you know it can't be all bad.) I got home late-ish last night to discover that my parents had eaten what little food I got on last week's ill-fated shopping trip, but I was too tired to really care. At least until I got home today, starving from a long day of not doing any work at all.

But luck was on my side: I had the welcome gift bag from Ayako and Jon, full of tasty Japanese goodies. I sorted through everything that might have carried with it a whiff of seaweed and settled on a bag of potato chips. As it happens, this was a very bad choice, indeed. Now granted, the writing in the bag was in Japanese, but if I had been paying any attention, I still would have realized that I shouldn't have opened it. Naturally, this wasn't the case.

I sat down at my computer, opened the bag, and my nose immediately wrinkled. ...In an "OK, whose the lady around here with sketchy hygiene issues, folks?" sort of a way. Unfortunately, I was the only lady present, so I crossed my legs and went through about 5 seconds of mortification before I realized two things: I was alone, and therefore didn't have to be too embarrassed, and the smell wasn't coming from me...it was coming from the bag.

I spat out the chips that I had recklessly stuffed in my mouth before any taste could seep in (god, I'm glad I live alone sometimes) and flipped the bag over to find a darling picture of a skateboarding prawn. Fucking hell. Prawn chips. That smell like, to put it politely, shellfish that I stuffed down my underwear and then ran a marathon with.

Never eat these. I sacrificed a little dignity and some bile to bring you this important lesson, kids, so pay attention.

(ps. I went to the Web site of Calbee, proud distributers of Kappa Ebisen, to try to find a picture of the skateboarding shrimp, and noticed that their slogan is, ahem, "Familiar and new tastes that are always being eaten by someone, somewhere." Ummmm. That's all.)

16 September 2007:

I have a new roommate.

Unfortunately for me, unless Tesser the Cat manages to land some advertising modeling work, I'm stuck paying all of the rent for the both of us. But she does repay me by sneezing in my face, so I guess that evens it up a bit.

Personally, I'm just hoping that she works out better than my previous pets. My fish, Moe and Deadeye Dick, were kidnapped not once but twice when I was in college--the second time, they were lost for good. (I couldn't come up with the ransom, I suppose, or maybe it's that I was moving to Arkansas and figured it was better this way.) Chisai Hime the Hamster made an ill-fated escape attempt. She managed to run from my room into the only other room in the entire dorm that guaranteed her a one-way ticket to a cage in Peale Science Center. So far, Tess isn't displaying any inclination to run away. Like me, she starts to move but then gets distracted by my bed and the promise of a long nap. And I'm sure the honorable door crew at my building will foil any and all kidnapping attemps. So take that! And welcome home, Tesser.

30 September 2007:

There was a time when this was not unusual for me.

It used to be that I was consistently awake at 4:48am on Sunday mornings. Unfortunately for me and perhaps one or two other people, most of these instances involved either last-minute research papers or me being an inadvertant cocktease (the difference is one between naivete and cruelty [and how sad is it that the only way I can spell naive, to this day, is by remembering the gas station scene in Reality Bites?]).

So I was outside just now, watching leaves swirl around in the gutter, when the Sun Times delivery guy pulled up and walked into my building. And it suddenly occured to me that some people, even now in 2007, were awake on purpose at 4:48am. Go figure. Then a cab went by with a guy and a girl with no shirt making out in the back. Huh! I was actually schoolmarmishly taken aback that people were just getting out of the clubs. I guess it's not everyone who can spend the early hours of their Sunday mornings composing ridiculous short stories starring their ankles. Then again, some can. But I find that those people are the sort who, a decade before, spent their late-night youth writing papers and wriggling away from their date's prying hands.

21 October 2007:

Surgical Booties.

The condo across the alley from me is for sale, I think. As I've been sitting in my sad little studio today trying to focus on my piddly freelance-for-spare-change operation, I've heard an awful lot of noise on the deck across the way, so I decided to stop reading about infectious disease and go spy on people instead. It's not terribly exciting, but it is kind of funny that the owners of the condo are insisiting that all the walk-throughs put surgical booties over their shoes. It took me about 20 minutes to realize that that's what was happening; at first, I just thought that everyone was wearing the same horrible shade of Crocs. So if you like booties and have 2.5 million dollars burning a hole in your pocket, stop on by. I'll wave at you from across the alley.

3 November 2007:

I’m impressionable.

I walk a lot.
And when I walk, I think.
And I think about the same four or five things, over and over.
It's been this way for decades.
Kind of like the only thing I doodle at meetings: a cartoonish profile of some sock-hop girl...I draw that face in meetings, and I drew it all over college lecture notes, and high school notes, and grade school assignments...

And I'm always distressed when I add something new to my daydreams only to find, on closer reflection, that I've unwittingly stolen a seen from a movie I saw the week before or from a book that I'm currently reading.

Tonight was a particularly bad example. I picked a daydream and was sprucing it up as I was walking to the train by imagining the people in more detail, which is something that I usually don't do (I'm all about the big picture--I have to squeeze a 2-hour scenario into a 5-minute walk, so that's just the way it goes).

So I'm walking down the street, trying to put just the right outfit on Evgeny Kissin. In my mind, he's a hopeless dork trying to pull together a style, so I decided he should be wearing really unstylish jeans with a white button-down, maroon sweater vest, and a black velvet blazer. I was extraordinarily happy with these details until I looked up and saw that the man walking toward me was wearing that exact same outfit.

I'm so unoriginal it's startling. ...But probably only to me.

6 November 2007:

Why I will be an awesome wife and mother.

(Before I get started, a disclaimer: this post is about pickles and deviled eggs. Feel free to make fun of my choice of foods, but realize that this is not the point of this post.)

Two days, two debacles:

Yesterday, I decided that I really wanted a dill pickle. Unfortunately, the only pickles available to me were locked inside an enormous gallon jar, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't get the thing open. So I ate my sandwich (very boring without the pickle, by the way) and went out. When I came home three damn hours later, I was still thinking about pickles, so I thought "fuck it" and took a screwdriver to the lid of the jar, victoriously popping the stupid vacuum seal. This left me with another problem: what to do with a gallon of pickles when you've just ruined the lid to the jar? (Not that the jar, at a whopping 12 inches tall, would have fit in my fridge anyway.) The answer probably should have been "Saran Wrap over the lid." But in my case, I decided that the answer should be "Ziploc."

That Ziploc commercial LIES, by the way. I came home today, excited about my unfettered access to pickles, only to find dill pickle brine soaking into every inch of my tiny kitchen floor.

After I mopped up the brine, which totally turned me off my original plan of eating pickles for dinner, I had to come up with another grand master meal plan. Given the limitedness of my kitchen--lots and lots of condiments and some badly freezerburned swordfish--I decided to go for the obvious: deviled eggs. Yeah, obvious.

So I boiled the eggs and decided to expediate the cooling process by putting them in a glass of ice water. Then I decided that this would not be nearly fast enough, so I put the ice water in the freezer. And then I forgot about the fucking eggs...until about five minutes ago, when I retrieved the glass, which is now 2 little eggs nestled among four ice cubes, surrounded by a glass of completely frozen water.

I just heard my microwave ding. Eggs'r up! These had better be the most fucking delicious deviled eggs of my entire picnic-attending existence. Dammit.

15 November 2007:

There’s a thought.

I ran into C., a very darling senior designer here at the press, and asked him what his plans were for Thanksgiving...forgetting for a second that, as a Korean, he may not be super amped for this particularly American holiday, aside from the 2 days off work that it will net him (then again, is anyone that excited about Thanksgiving anymore for reasons beyond that?).

He said that he would probably just take his family to the movies, commenting that, on Thanksgiving Day, movie theaters were "just full of Asians. It's a sea of black hair out there."

New dating strategy. Check. Thanks C!

26 November 2007:

Nostalgia cramps.

Ow. I've been awfully nostalgic this year. Is it an age thing? A change thing? An unhappy-with-work thing? I'm kind of hoping it's an allergy, and there's a shot I can get to normalize. Hopefully, at the same time as I go in for my anti-nostalgia shot, the doctor can give me something that will help me stop crying at Disney movies.

I was home last week--six days with not much to do, including smoking, seeing as how I used up the last of my bad excuses/parental goodwill vouchers when I was 21. And the dog is officially too old to go on walks, so there wasn't even a legitimate reason to leave.

[pic mia]

(I came thisclose to telling my mom I needed to run to WalMart for yarn, but seriously? Yarn? From WalMart? On Black Friday? Who are we fucking kidding? Who could actually need yarn that badly?)

As a result of having not much to do, I decided that it would be as good a time as any to clean out the attic. I turned the kitchen into a weird (and embarrassing and creepy) doll beauty shop for about 48 hours, which is the length of time it took me to dust, destain, wash, coif, and rebox my dolls, all of which have been sitting out for the last, oh, 20 years. And all this while my mom was alternately smiling and crying over each and every single doll (except for Baby Sweet Tears: she yelled at me--again--for drawing all over her with a purple felt tip pen when I was 20 months old).

[pic mia]

So I was already weirdly weepy by the time I ventured back upstairs to take stock of 26 years of memorabilia, which was dustily and haphazardly stored in 5 moldering boxes. Ugly fucking clay ashtrays. Diaries dating back to 1984 (my favorite entry: on one day in 1986, the big activity of the day was repeatedly stuffing my pants pockets so full of stuff that my pants fell down). Kindergarten worksheets. Gymnastics ribbons. A pair of Troll earrings. Every note that I ever received in high school.

Two themes emerged from pile after pile of papers, crafts, homemade books, and letters:

I have apparently been obsessed with Japan for far longer than I realized. Maybe it's that the rising sun was easy to paint, maybe it's that I went to an international grade school for one short year when I was 5. But something stuck.
If I had been paying attention to the clues that kept surfacing from, oh, 7 years of age, I could have so easily fallen into a dream career. It was all about writing and commercials. If a paper didn't have a rising sun stamped on it somewhere, you can be sure there was something commercial: I was writing poetry about commercials. Writing my own fake commercials. Writing about writing commercials. Except for a brief foray (1985) into devotional poetry, I was all Hasbro, all the time.

This past week really kind of fucked me up. And it's not because we had ribs for Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know what happened. I've been nauseous in that anticipatory sort of way for days now, my dreams are all geared toward big reveals that never happen, I keep thinking I'm forgetting something important. I'm sure all the nervousness will fade in the next day or so...but in the meantime, I wish I'd kind of left all those boxes in the corner of the attic, next to the pickle lamps and old Pepsi bottles and discarded lawn furniture.

ps. The best thing to come out of the attic, by far--and this has nothing to do with me, other than the sense of accomplishment--is that finally, FINALLY, after 23 years, 3 moves, and god knows how many infestations, I convinced my parents to throw away the chocolate bunny they included in my brother's Easter basket in 1984.

[pic mia]

pps. A final example of my family's awesomeness: My mom loves decorating for Christmas. It is, almost certainly, the thing each year that takes up most of her thought and time. The woman has six Christmas trees and a major metropolitan area's worth of Snow Village. She digs it. But she decided last year, when she had to decorate alone, that the 8 days it took her to complete was too damn long. Which is why she affixed ornaments to each tree with such ferocity as to make them impossible to get off, and then had my dad wrap them as they stood and cart them to the attic. So this year, my dad and I made six trips to the attic, each time for a different tree, and each time, holding it a foot away from our bodies as we carried it through the hall, down the stairs, outside, into the main house, and down the hall, etc., so we didn't get ornament shrapnel embedded in our arms. Amazingly, not one damn ornament broke. Bravo, mom!

The last of 2006.

2008-07-22T10:40:00.000-05:00

1 September 2006:

Damn, I guess that means I have to stay here.

...Not that Chicago is a bad city to be in by any means, but over the course of the last month, I'd pretty much convinced myself that fleeing was, in fact, a wonderful idea. I have boxes already amassed in my cube and I was set to steal out of the city under the cover of darkness. (Who am I kidding...I actually was all set to call my parents so my dad could take time off work, pop some medication, and do all my heavy lifting before driving the U-Haul 1000 miles into the distance while I flew and met them on the other end. It's what I do best.)

And now? Now I'll be in Chicago for a while. But for good cause:

No more editing medical journals for me! Sure, this will make me a whole lot less interesting at my Dad's Christmas party come December, but in the long run, it's a good move.

So, starting in October, I'll be moving approximately 500 feet to the southeast, where they have promised me an actual, honest-to-god office with a door, as well as a job as a manuscript editor in books!

Say it with me, people: Yeeeeeeeeee Haw.

7 September 2006:

The hime reunion weekend, or, there's a reason I haven't returned to college in 6 years.

I wanted to write something about my trip up to Holland, Michigan, with my college friends over the Labor Day weekend. I may eventually get there, once I invent a story that's interesting enough to share.

One thing that's holding me up is that I wanted to do an illustrated entry, and I don't have a scanner, so I can't put all those lovely pre-digital era photos o' mary up for group loving.

So...September. Holland, Michigan. The himes. That's "heeee-may," not "hi, me." College nicknames that raged out of control. Only 3 of us could make it. There's me, obviously: yoruhime (princess of the night). Nic was ichiban hime (number-one princes), and Ayako was CTT hime (the initials of the 3 guys she was dating). Asuka (toshokan, or, library, hime) was at a music festival in Tokyo, and Crystal and Susan have long since vanished. Well, they're living in Missouri and Arkansas, respectively, so it's the same thing. There's your background, so that when I finally get around to telling stories, you'll have that.

Since I can't post photos of myself from the 95-99 glory years, I've found some comparable shots:

Could be me, circa 1997:

"Yesssssssssssssss!!! I made the Dean's List. Sweeeeeeeeet!!!"

Or this:

"Yeah, I totally snagged the Freshman History Scholar Award. How do you like me now, bitches?"

Or maybe this:

"Awesome! I love eating cereal for dinner! Phelps Dining Hall ROCKS."

Now here's the sad part. After all that hard work getting everyone's favorite Olympians into the pictoral of the real-life college student Mary, I've actually found a picture for comparison:

Wah-wah-wah.

Seriously. I don't even know how to caption this, other than:

Most Boring, Wholesome College Student, EVER. Sad, but true. No wonder I don't have any good stories.

12 September 2006:

Proof that I have consistently acted like an idiot throughout my life.

This morning, I went downstairs to buy tea. Like many beverages (coffee, grape pop, gingerale) I enjoy my tea with hella cream in it so that I'm basically drinking milk with a splash of Earl Gray for taste. So I was mixing my tea, and because it hadn't steeped for long enough, it was looking pretty much like a 20-oz up of skim milk or something, and this reminded me of a story from long ago. And now I'm going to share it with you. And you're going to sit there and take it. Yes, you are.

When I lived in Japan, it was my sad duty once a month to travel to Hachihonmatsu to teach at the junior high school there. It was by far the oldest and dreariest of the schools (and I don't know if you've ever seen photos of Japanese schools, but they're not usually designed to be aesthetically pleasing or comfortable in the first place).

Not only was it the ugliest, oldest, dirtiest, and least well equipped of the schools in my rotation, it had, in my opinion, the strangest faculty. In my other schools, I was able to get along with (or at least tolerate) the other teachers long enough to get lessons completed. But at Hachihonmatsu, things were much different. One teacher routinely left me in charge of his class, despite the fact that I was never supposed to be alone with students (and I can say from experience that sticking one 21-year-old girl who doesn't speak the language into a classroom of 40 fifteen-year-olds is NEVER a good idea; I don't care if they are the most polite students on the face of the earth: they're still fifteen-year-old assholes). Another teacher never actually taught English during English class, and then would spend the hour afterwards apologizing for his horrible inability to do his job (this man was actually the source of many of my best stories until he committed suicide over Spring break that year; the stories lost something after that). The third teacher was younger and much better--nicer, funnier, smarter--but because the principal of the school insisted on the three of us taking our smoke breaks together in his office so he could say "Good couple! Pretty babies! So white! Soooo white!" things between us were, understandably, a bit awkward.

Anyway, the real source of my angst was the vice-principal. That man was a fucking dick. I hated him. Once I had to call in because I was running late, and he refused to hand the phone off to an English teacher for translating purposes, and kept screaming WHAT? WHAT? Into the phone, so I had to call the Board of Education and have them intervene. Another time, a teacher had asked me to speak to one of her homeroom students, a Brazilian girl who had just transferred to Japan a few months previously. No one in the school spoke Portuguese, and Marianne's Japanese wasn't good enough for the teacher to yell at her, basically, so it fell on me to explain to her that it would be a good idea if she could be a lot less foreign-acting during school hours. I asked the vice-principal if I could use the counseling room; my cluster of desks was occupied by all of the English teachers, as well as Marianne's homeroom teacher, and I didn't want her to be worried about people listening in. Naturally, he said no. Not only that--he had me move a couple of chairs right up to his desk so he could observe. That wasn't awkward at all.

Good god, this is getting long. So here's the story:

One afternoon, I went to go get a cup of coffee from the tiny kitchenette at the back of the teacher's common room. I poured the powdered creamer into the bottom of my cup so I wouldn't have to use (and then wash) a spoon to stir it in (yes, I'm THAT fucking lazy). However, I discovered, after dumping the creamer, that there was no coffee made. There was no coffee in the tin, either, and none of the teachers that I knew well were around and naturally, me being me, I didn't want to ask someone I didn't know, so I decided to forego the coffee drinking that day.

It was then that the vice-principal wandered back to the kitchenette to get some tea. I was standing there like an idiot, pondering the coffee-less hours stretching ahead, when he caught me off guard. I reacted to this situation like I normally do: I do/say something completely idiotic and then, instead of laughing it off or apologizing for my idiocy, I follow through on whatever comes out of my mouth. And in Japan, this behavioral glitch had the potential to take on new and exciting dimensions, thanks to the language barrier.

In this case, the vice-principal asked me what I was doing. Paralyzed by a fear/hate combo and some REALLY bad Japanese-speaking abilities, here's the conversation (obviously modified, due to my still-stellar Japanese and 7 years of fading memory, but it's the gist):

Asshole Veep (AV): Nani o suru? [What are you doing?]

Mary Sensei (MS): Nomimono o...nomimasu. [Getting a drink....to drink.]

AV: Kureepu desu. [That's Creap {the brand of powdered creamer}].

MS: Soo desu. Oishii. [Yes, it is. Delicious!]

AV: Kureepu dake nondeiru? [You're drinking that, plain???]

MS: Mnn.So. [Um, yeah.]

AV: Koohii de? [With coffee?]

MS: Iie. Ja, atsui. [No. Um, hot.]

AV: *gives me a totally quizzical and not-unscornful look*

MS: *pours hot water into the powdered creamer that she was about to wash down the drain, and pops it in the microwave, where it froths up and spills over the side of her mug. She takes it out of the microwave, wipes up the mess, and keeps her eyes firmly on the mug.*

AV: Dozoo. [Please...{though I like to think, in my head, that he was saying "I triple-dog dare you, bitch.}]

MS: *takes a sip, and falteringly says* Oishii. [Delicious!]

AV: *laughs maniacally*

MS: *skulks back to desk, where she heroically finished drinking her half-a-mug of hot powdered creamer.*

The end.

The Hachihonmatsu Trifecta

Writing out that stupid story about the creamer reminded me of a bunch of other equally stupid stories of me behaving like a complete fucking gaijin in Japan--the kind of foreigner those crazy kids love to make fun of. Here are my top 3--which all, oddly, took place in Hachihonmatsu. And they also all involve the bus, which is kind of weird. So if that last post really annoyed you (or, if you're Joe, and my really bad Japanese totally pissed you off) feel free to ignore (or to print up and pass out to students as an example of how not to speak, or what have you).

Story 1: The Bus Driver.

You will remember in the previous post that I mentioned a particular English teacher who a) wasn't very good at his job and b) was very apologetic about not being good at his job. One day, I was preparing to beat it out the door a few minutes early. The bus came once an hour, so if I didn't leave a few minutes early, I'd--GOD FORBID--have to stay an hour late. On my way out the door, Engrish Sensei, as he will now be known, stopped me to apologize for a shitty class (on the day in question, I'd finally had it and let loose on his class with a huge lecture about how they had to try harder and perservere and all this Japanese bullshit, which I, of course, delivered in English, and which was succinctly translated by Engrish Sensei as: "Ganbatte kudasai!" ["Try your best!" basically]. No matter how many half-bows I sent his way, I couldn't make it out the door--there was always another apology, another sentence delivered in engrish at a pace of 12 words per minute ("So....this-u...wee-ken-do. Will...you...do...what?" God..I should soo not make fun of that; that's exactly how Japanese comes flying out of my mouth, but whatever. This is my story, not his). Besides, I was strangely transfixed by a glob of spaghetti sauce that had managed to hang on to the corner of his mouth, despite lunch being four hours gone. As you can imagine, by the time I managed to bow-wave-smile my way out of the teachers room and run down the street, I could just make out the bus rounding the far corner. Shit.

I sat in the little bus hut, combing through papers, reading the world's most infuritating book ever (Gai-Jin, by James Clavell. I heartily do not recommend this book, but I'm also happy to sit around and bitch about it at length, so if you want to read it, look me up when you're done, and we can have a go), and listening to my CD-man (hey man, I was cutting edge, even back then, yo. And I was probably listening to Phish. God, I'm so cool it makes me cry). After apparently 58 minutes (I wasn't wearing a watch), I was so paralytic with boredom that I decided to reorganize my backpack. No shit: I sat there, face forward, for 58 goddamn minutes. I turn my back for 2, and next thing I know, I feel a stiff breeze and turn around to see the fucking bus passing me by!!! Damn you!!!

I slammed all my crap back into my backpack and took off running...for about 2 seconds, when I decided that I couldn't be bothered to expend the energy (see the earlier mention about not wanting to wash a spoon for a reality-check on my laziness). I slowed to a halt approximately 2.5 feet from the bus hut and turned to skulk back to my bench, where I could be all pissed off at the prospect of another hour's wait in comfort. Then I heard a man yell, and turned to see the bus parked on the side of the road, emergency blinkers blazing, a passenger's head sticking out of the window and making silly noises in a weird language in my direction.

So I did the nice, polite thing. I smiled and waved. This had the alarming reaction of sending the bus careening in reverse back to the bus hut. The bus driver de..bused, I guess, and came running toward me a little ways. And here's the interaction that followed, all in Engrish for your reading pleasure. Once again, note my awesome responses and my commitment to following through with the ridiculous things that come out of my mouth.

Bus Driver (BD): I'm so sorry! I didn't see you.
Mary Sensei (MS): OK.
BD: [waits a bit, and then says] Are you waiting for the bus?
MS: Yes.
BD: ...Get on, then.
MS: Oh, I'm waiting for a friend. Then, bus.
BD: So, you're not riding the bus?
MS: Friend. Then Bus.
BD: [no response]
MS: Thank you!
BD: [gets on bus, no doubt cursing the motherfucking gaijin who make his life hell, and drives away]
MS: [realizing what she has done, curses self, then walks 7 miles back to Saijo, where she lives, rehearsing the following phrase the entire way: "Yes! I'm riding the bus today! Thank you for stopping!"]

Story 2: An Old Man's Raspberries.

One morning during the rainy season, I took the bus out to Hachihonmatsu to teach another round of invigorating classes with the affable teachers on staff there. I was pumped, let me tell you. On the plus side, it had actually stopped raining for a short bit, which was good, because I'd forgotten my umbrella. The bus pulled up to my stop on the side of the road. Well, "pulled up" is being generous: it stopped within a yard of the sidewalk, leaving an overflowing gutter of fast-moving, dirty rainwater for me to gracefully leap over in an attempt to make it to the sidewalk. Wait for it: I...landed on the sidewalk. Ha! Fooled you! You know what didn't land, though? My sandal, which went flying past the sidewalk, over the fence, and down a drop-off into a bunch of fucking bushes. And THEN it started raining. So I was standing there as all my student rode past me on their little bikes, bowing and saying "Ohayoo gozaimasu!" and getting a load of me, trying to balance on one foot. Well, not wanting to look like a total asshole, I did the only thing that seemed sensible at the time: I took off my other shoe. At least now I was even. (I think you all need to know at this point that I actually had another pair of shoes in my backpack. Why I didn't put these on, I have no idea. I'm just not that smart, it would seem.) About 30 seconds after this command decision, and old man who was walking toward town stopped and said, "Why aren't you wearing shoes?" I smiled at him. So he switched tactics. "Where are your shoes?" Ah! This, I comprehended. I pointed with one hand down the drop-off, and shook my bag with the other as I sagely said "One shoes, bag. One shoes, there." He looked at me, looked over the fence, and then thrust a plastic bag full of slightly squashed raspberries into my hands, scaled the fence, and disappeared from view. Damn, that drop-off was steeper than I had thought. A few moments later, he circled around and came up on the other side of the sidewalk, his clothes (a very happening blue sweatsuit) covered in those little sticker-things. Briars? Brambles? I have no idea. I leaned in to start helping him pick the brambles (briars, whatever) off, but I may have lunged for forcibly than I intended. He shrank back, threw my shoe at me, grabbed his berries, and shouted, "Be more careful next time!" before crossing the road and returning to his original mission. Me? As follow-through as ever, I put my other shoe in my backpack and walked to school.

Story 3: Mr. Eczema and the Luuuurve Hotel

To see how this story begins, go reread the first paragraph of story 1, detailing how Mr. Engrish was able to stretch a 30-second "goodbye" exchange into War and Peace. So there I was, waiting in my favorite bus hut. I'd gotten smarter, though; this time, I'd run to the AM/PM across the street, so I was entertaining myself with some tasty vitamin C pellets and drinking Qoo juice. A man in a weird minivan/stationwagon hybrid pulled up and rolled down the window. "Hello!" Ah, I was used to this. Ahem. Celebrity. It's a rough life, being the only (to hear them say it) gun-toting, drug-smuggling, badass whitey in, well, probably 10 square kilometers, at any rate. Always one to appease my public, I waved and smiled and said "Hi!"

Miniwagon Man (MWM): Are you English teacher?
Mary Sensei: (No, you fucking dumbass, I'm the shamisen master [at this point, I'd been there for almost a year, and was getting sick of this shit].) Yes, I am.
MWM: Oh, at Hachihonmatsu, ne?
MS: Yes, I teach junior high school.
MWM: Oh, I have.
MS: You have?
MWM: Yes, I have.
MS: Do your kids go there?
MWM: Mmmmm eeeetoooo.
MS: Anata no kododmo ga Hachihonmatsu no chuugakusei? [Are your kids students at HJHS?]
MWM: Ah, so! Yokkata dekiru! Nihongo o jozu ne! Blah blah blah blah [Yes! Well done--your Japanese is good! ...some shit I didn't understand.]
MS: Gomen, jozu dewanai. Zenzen wakaranai. [I'm sorry; it's no good. I don't understand anything]
MWM: Ah, wakatta [I understand]. You waiting bus?
MS: Yes.
MWM: You come. I give ride. [Oh, how that phrase would haunt me later.]
MS: Oh, no thank you; I'm fine.
MWM: No, is OK. I give ride. Please, come.
MS: [because Japan is a place of mystical innocence for all gaijin] OK, thank you!
MWM: Where you live?
MS: Near the station. [I'm only just now realizing that this is a pat answer from every foreign-language textbook ever written.]

(MWM proceeds to drive me to the wrong station, which, quite frankly, was fine, because by this point, he was leering at me, making really inappropriate breast-related comments, and totally creeping me out...especially since I was sitting in a mess of juice boxes, stuffed animals, and children's book. Bring on the sexy talk, big boy!)

MWM: You live here?
MS: [leaning far away] Yes. Here is good. Thank you. Bye--
MWM: No, I drive to home. Where?
MS: No, it's just up there [waving vaguely at an apartment complex on a hill across the road]. I'll walk.
MWM: [grabs onto my arm] You know what this is?
MS: A train station?
MWM: [pointing] No, this.
MS: A car? A train? A tree? What?
MWM: There. Is love hotel. You know?
MS: [fuuuuuuuuuck] Yeeees. I know. I have to go.
MWM: Yes!!! We must go!! You like?
MS: Nonononono. I go home now. No hotel. Home.
MWM: But I pay.
MS: No thank you.
MWM: I mean, I pay you.
MS: No thank you.
MWM: I pay you 50,000-en, OK?
MS: [briefly pondering what I could do with an extra $500 before I gross myself out and snap out of it] NO! Thank you for the ride, I have to go.
MWM: Can I have a kiss?

And this is the really awesome part. I. Don't. Want. To. Be. RUDE! So I kiss him! Ew!!! What the fuck? I kissed a scabby, creepy man with red-raw skin who picked me up outside of a junior high school. I'm not fit for society. It was only then that I got out of the car, pretended to walk up the hill to those apartments, and then turned around and trudged--you guessed it--7 miles home. (I'd like to point out that it wasn't idiocy keeping me from taking the train; we were at a bullet train station, not a local train station. So y'all can think I'm stupid...just not that stupid.)

So, that's the Hachihonmatsu experience. You guys can all cross that one off your iteneraries next time you're around there and just head straight for Miyajima Island or the Peace Museum in Hiroshima, instead. You'll thank me for it.

14 September 2006:

Considering what's really important: The Wardrobe Edition.

This morning, I was trying to accomplish a few things with my choice of outfit:

1. Thrift (hence the leotard that I bought for a party and have only worn once [because it's a fucking leotard] and have therefore not gotten full value out of).

2. Style (hence the really darling Moth tanktop that I have to wear a few more times before it gets cold, because next season, I just might hate it).

3. Practicality (despite my desire to be thrifty yet stylish, I had to take into account that it was 63 degrees this morning, hence the cardigan [but...I get really fucking hot when I bust ass to the train station since I'm always late, hence the jean skirt to balance out the long sleeves]).

Whew. As I was standing in my closet, pondering the least embarrassing way to get into my leotard (eyes closed, back facing mirror), a thought occurred to me. I like beverages. A lot. In a given day at the office, this is what I drink:

32 oz. coffee
64 oz. water
24 oz. pop (or, if it's a bad day, 44 oz.)
16 oz. of tea or other hot beverage of choice

And here I was, about to strap on a one-piece, a tank top, a cardigan, and a skirt, thereby officially creating the most awkward outfit EVER for peeing at work. Think about it: 136 (or, on a bad day, 156) ounces are a lot of reasons to keep me from wearing such a disastrous combination. Enough, even, to make me disregard thrift, style, and practicality.

And I put it on, anyway. One simple thing overrode all those things that had piled up against my outfit choice.

My chest looks fucking fantastic today. And that trumps all.

13 October 2006:

I owe Eric an apology; his cat's name is much better than I gave it credit for.

So my friend Eric got a cat some weeks ago and posted a blog and some photos to introduce Neko to all and sundry. Precious. But wait.

Neko? I thought. Neko. So, because I'm the only person in the free world who is allowed to have an Asian-inspired ANYTHING going on, I called him out on naming his cat "Cat," as Neko is, indeed, the Japanese word for cat. Mostly I was confused, because I couldn't picture Eric doing anything so (a) transparent and (b) ridiculous.

As it turns out, he was probably as confused by my comment as I was by his name choice. He named Neko after a musician, not after a Babelfish entry.

So Eric, I'm sorry.

Busted, or, I need to come up with a better answer.

A month or so ago, I started hanging out with a guy I had first met back in April. He's not normally the sort of person I would date, and he kind of (really) weirded me out by not giving me his phone number, among a host of other things (like showing up at my door at one in the morning), and we didn't have much to say to each other that the other'd be able to understand, as I don't speak any Spanish (though I'm learining: dios mio!). For those reasons, among others, I did not feel the slightest bit guilty ignoring him and hoping he'd eventually go away.

I'm a bitch.

And he didn't go away.

He continued to call or e-mail, at first every few days, and then every few weeks. I don't know what (boredom? a desire to wish him a happy Mexican Independence Day? a longing to hang out with someone with a car?) drove me to call him a month ago, but call him, I did. Within an hour, he was at my place. This was almost exactly 4 months after I had stopped taking his phone calls. He asked me why I hadn't called him back or picked up the phone, which I figured he might be curious about, and so I said...

"I've been busy." And he said...

"Oh, OK."

That was it! It was fabulous. I didn't actually expect the "busy" thing to work. I certainly don't buy it when I hear it from a guy; I couldn't believe he was going to accept that answer; he didn't even say "Busy with what?!" Nope--just "OK."

And it was OK, until last night, when he asked me again why I didn't call him for so long. Crappity crap. Because I'm still a bitch, I tried to play the language barrier card (which has also been pulled on me in the past). And that didn't work. (Yeah, it didn't work when guys used it on me, either. Shoulda known.) But I couldn't think of a good answer, because I'm sure he doesn't want to hear any version of "you creeped me out," which, at this point, is the only reason I can remember, or, "I'm a bitch," which he probably knows already.

Should we be dicussing why I'm hanging out with a guy who I found to be creepy in the first place? ...I'll save that for another session.

So if you guys have any suggestions of good excuses, let me know, and I'll get back to you about how well it worked. We'll consider it a market test for your future lies and/or half-truths.

15 October 2006:

I might need to get my reflexes checked.

Assume for a moment that you're on the other side of the conversation presented here. At what point do the following comments (presented here in chronological order) cause you to make your excuses, push the person out the door, and throw the deadbolt behind them? Where would you have bailed on this talk (assuming that you're not using the person as a character study, of course)?

1. Salud!
2. So your mama knows about me? She OK with me?
3. What do you think about marriage?
4. Did you know they have drive-through weddings in Las Vegas?
5. My dad would really like you...
6. How many babies you want?
7. Do you like the name Nadia? That's what I want to name my little girl.
8. I think Cancun would be good for weddings.
9. I want to be American citizen, but it's so hard.
10. Did you know you can get a green card by marriage?

9 November 2006:

Yes, this is a squirrel-intensive post.

This morning, I saw a squirrel running (hopping? moving? cavorting?) across (hmmm...can't "cavort across"--I'll stick with running for now) the lawn, and it reminded me of a friend. Not that my friend is a squirrel/looks like a squirrel, but squirrels and Ayako are forever linked in my head. And here's why.

Back in college, she arrived on campus fresh from Nagoya, Japan. Her only other trip to the US had been a brief stay in Chicago and Michigan with a college boyfriend. And, I don't know, maybe it was too cold on her previous visit, but the woman had never seen a squirrel before. I was positively dumbfounded by this information, and she was positively thrilled to be surrounded on a daily basis by so many adorable, pet-looking black, gray, and red squirrels (she had a pet gerbil at home of which she was very fond, so maybe the squirrels eased her homesickness--what do I know). Anyway, her love of squirrels was an adorable quirk, mostly because she took such delight in something that was so common.

Fast forward about 5 years. Ayako had returned to the States (after going home for 2 years to finish her degree and do a quick stint as an OL, or, office lady)--this time, she was in New York City while I was in Boston. One weekend, she took the Chinatown Bus up to visit me. We were taking a nice, normal autumn stroll through the Common when, all of the sudden, she sucked her cheeks in, started making chipmunk noises, and took off running with her shoulders hunkered over and arms outstretched. For the life of me, I couldn't figure it out. She loathes drugs, so I immediately discounted that explanation as I watched this petite, beskirted Japanese woman weave around like an idiot. Then I realized: bitch was chasing squirrels. It looked less like she was going in for the kill and more like she wanted to scoop them all up for hugs and love. I thought briefly that I should explain to her that, Boston not being a Disney movie, she might want to stay away from the little rats, but it was so funny all I could do was laugh and then buy her a tea after she'd exhausted herself in her capacity as Ambassador to City Wildlife.

Maybe you had to be there, though.

10 November 2006:

Look before you speak.

A few days ago, a guy complimented my eyes. It would have been a lovely compliment, and I would have been totally flattered, if he had only left the word "green" out of it. It's not that I dislike having green eyes; it's that I, in fact, don't have green eyes. My eyes are brown. Seriously: how hard is it to look at a person's face and go down a mental checklist before you open your mouth ("Smile, nice. Check. Teeth, parsley-free. Check. Nose, not buttoney enough. Don't mention. Check. Eyes, pretty. Color? Brown. Check."). And, if all else fails, the color doesn't really need to be thrown in there at all. It doesn't really add too much to a generic compliment. It's not like I'm going to sit there and think, "Ooooh, his stunning powers of observation are making me soooo hot." ...Especially if your powers of observation suck.

I know I'm harping on this, but I don't want you to think I'm pissy. Mostly, I find it amusing. And the only reason I'm writing this down is because it reminded me of the first time it happened to me. And I'm about to write about high school, so you may wish to skip to the third and final paragraph at this point. Still here? OK. At some dance or other my freshman year of high school, I was dancing with my little boyfriend to "Brown Eyed Girl," because it's necessary for high schools across the country to take this perfectly delightful song and play it at every dance over the course of four years, thereby ensuring that that one little bit of Van Morrison will be ruined for you forever. Anyway, we were dancing and he was singing to me and he changed the lyrics to "blue eyed girl" and then he hugged me and said, because it wasn't obvious what his motivation was "Because your eyes are blue." And I said. "Yes, except they're brown." And that was our last little date.

Then again, maybe eye color is harder to get right than it seems. After all, not too long ago--and I don't know why we would even have been talking about this--I mentioned to my mom that she had really pretty blue eyes. (Oh, I think I was trying to redeem myself; I was probably doing her eye makeup, because she can't see without her glasses, and I commented on her freakishly tiny eyes, because I'm awesome and thoughtful. But seriously, her eyes are the size of a toddler's. No lie. It's really weird.) Anyway, instead of handing her a mild compliment, I wound up offending her further; according to her, her eyes are not blue. I decided to hold off on asking her if she was color blind (because I SWEAR her eyes are blue), but I felt really bad: this is my mom! And I don't know the color of her eyes? What sort of horrible, selfish person does that make me? But since then, I've heard my sister-in-law, my niece, and my grandmother all make the same mistake, so that makes me feel a little better (and even though about 33% of the family has in the last few months called my mom out on blue eyes, she's still insisting on hazel, god knows why).

Would you buy your personal soundtrack? I wouldn't buy mine, I think.

My oldest brother, when we moved him to college in 1993, made a huge deal out of picking the first song EVER to play in his dorm room. This seemed like a novel idea to meat the time, since I didn't before (and still don't, really) pay attention to music or associate it with particular events. For the record, my brother had long since forgotten all about this and was appropriately embarrassed when I reminded him that he had chosen "Jealousy" by the Gin Blossoms. So, that's why most of this list is post-1993...that's when the idea struck me, or rather, struck Jim, and I ran with it. So here's a short list of those transporting kinds of songs. Perhaps later, when I'm either braver, drunker, or a combination of the two, I'll do another list of the songs that provide background music to the thoughts that cycle through my head. But, as they tend to be embarrassing thoughts at best and disturbing thoughts at worst, don't go holding your breath.

I remember a lot of ABBA and Herman's Hermits and classical music from my childhood. It's what my mom and I would clean the house to while my brothers were outside doing yard work. God, gender roles kick ass. My brother once found a Led Zepplin record in with my mom's collection of Hyden, Beethoven, movie soundtracks...you get the picture, and I believe her response was "Who in the hell is that?" So, there's some general background. Here are some specifics:

Neil Diamond. Shilo. I'm always reminded of driving from Virginia to Illinois when I was 5 and we were moving. My dad had gone early to start his new job, so it was my mom, my brothers, and me, and the Angel Hair Barbie that I had BEGGED my mom for for months. Anyway, she had a Neil Diamond tape that she played nonstop, and I always cried over Shilo, because I thought it was so sad that this kid couldn't get anyone to play with him.

Van Morrison. Into the Mystic. OK, jumping ahead about ten years, this was one of my brother's favorite songs. Unfortunately for him, he got sick of it far before I did, and I would force him to play it on the way to school nearly every morning. I remember drawing a lot of gypsies in the margins of my notes that year. This song also calls to mind old, tan Honda civics, the smell of high school, and my mortal fear of messing up my brother's car with my muddy shoes.

The Cranberries. Linger. When I was 16, I got my first credit card and a clothing allowance, because my mom had finally gotten sick of taking us all shopping. Always one to abuse small freedoms, I set off in search of the sluttiest clothes I could find (however, being ridiculously naive, the "sluttiest" I could do was the occasional baby doll dress or mini skirt...and this one very odd outfit that consisted of white jeans and a pink macrame sweater that basically looked like a very loosely croched, oversized doily that I wore with a matching bra [this outfit wasn't so much slutty as it was just in incredibly poor, early 90s taste, by the way]). Anyway, I got this one little sundress that I absolutely loved, but I had no reason to wear it out of the house, so I used to put it on and dance around to "Linger" in my bedroom. One day, after about a week, I came home to find that, like so many of the clothes I purchased, the sundress was gone--returned to the store by a very nonplussed mother. Seems she should have kept shopping for me, after all.

Phish. Sparkle. Fast forward a bit more to college. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I decided that I was tortured and misunderstood and that nobody really liked me. That third part may well have been true, but it was becuase I was an asshole, not because I was misunderstood. Anyway, I played "Sparkle" for my roommates and my boyfriend by way of explaining my feelings. Because that's what artists do. They let others speak for them. Right? Right?

Cars. My Best Friend's Girl. Later on in sophomore year, hanging out with a new group of friends who were just as misunderstood and assholish as me. Mostly we just smoked up and blared classic rock, this being one of my favorites. When I hear this song now, I can still picture, and more disturbingly, smell the disgusting hovel that was my friend's room: ash ground into the carpet, half-eaten sandwhiches left to go stale and molder on plates, filthy futons, those ridiculous sphere candles that glow when you light them, beaded curtain...your typical stoner room, you know the drill.

Leonard Cohen. The Future. Also in my sophomore year. I decided that Lenny was profound. SO much more so than Phish, doncha know? But...did I like Leonard Cohen for himself, or for Happy Harry Hardon? That is, indeed, the eternal quesiton.

Fleetwood Mac. Go Your Own Way. This quickly became THE song to play on the jukebox at Skyles while shooting embarrassingly bad, angry games of pool. These games usually coincided with the long periods of time when my boyfriend would ditch me to go hang out with his computer science groupies and I'd be left with my lit mag buddies to play pool. "Go Your Own Way" is still all greasy pizza, Joel's missing teeth, Sufjan's underwear-over-jeans look, and my three-minute protest to my boyfriend, before he resurfaced to take me home and I forgot that I was supposed to be angry with him and he was, indeed, supposed to go his own way. God, I'm deep.

Will Smith. Miami. Thankfully, this isn't a song that one actually hears anymore when they turn on the radio, but when I do come across it, I immediately think of cleaning the boys' bathroom in my dorm at college, because back in my brief yet stimulating janitorial days, this song was very popular. There's one charming story, in particular, about Oskar, who was a really good looking exhange student from Kazakhstan who was taking Susan to a formal (and, because my friends and I were all ridiculously jealous of her good fortune, we hated her ever-so-slightly for that), who decided he was comfortable enough with his date's best friend to come in to the bathroom that I was cleaning, take a shit, and then ask me about life and Susan while I was holding my breath and scrubbing toilets. Sexiest moment ever, I swear.

Ike and Tina Turner. Proud Mary. A staple of my senior year of college (I definitely watched "What's Love Got To Do With It" one too many times). Susan and I went to Graceland for Spring Break that year, and on the way home got lost in Memphis, so we were still on the road, somewhere in Kentucky, at 3am. In order to keep from falling asleep, we were chainsmoking, drinking Coke mixed with coffee, and screaming along with Ike and Tina into emptied out pop bottles.

Billy Joel. Matter of Trust. When I first moved to Japan, I was gagging for something--ANYTHING--American, and the closest I could come was a dubbed version of Sesame Street. The second closest was Billy Joel. I bought the third installment of his greatest hits a few weeks after I got to Saijo, as soon as I bought a little stereo. Mostly, when I hear A Matter of Trust, I remember the hot-straw smell of the tatami mat and how I would let my feet hang outside the sliding door and rest on the hot aluminum flooring of my balcony, smoke, listen to this song, and cry, because I missed the window for calling my parents, what with the 13-hour time difference.

Madonna. Like a Virgin and Fleetwood Mac. Tusk. Both of these songs remind me of walking around Saijo--at least, for the first part of the year until my discman broke, at which point I had to go it alone, in silence. Weirdly, I only associate Madonna with walking down the hill on my way to school, and only on sunny days. "Tusk" recalls lonely evening strolls where I would set out to take up time because I was so bored and wind up lost and climbing into a cab and trying to explain to an uncomprehending, begloved cabbie where I lived.

Dixie Chicks. Ready to Run. Every time is the same: putting on makeup in the dark at 9:30pm on Friday nights, getting ready to go out to the Electric Cowby in Little Rock. I lived in a very odd-smelling house that year--wet paint, cedar, new carpet, mildew, heat, and scented candles (well, the candles, at least, were my fault). I can still smell it.

The Band. Up on Cripple Creek. The games of pool were still embarrassingly bad (though they were no longer angry) by the time I got to Louisville, which is why I switched to playing Ms. Pac Man. There was some dive bar or other on Bardstown Road and this song ALWAYS seemed to be on the jukebox. But mostly, it seems to me that instead of electronic beeps, this song should be the sound coming out of the Ms. Pac Man machine.

Jeff Buckley. Hallelujah. I cannot listen to this song without thinking of several things--all of them Boston-related. Mostly, I think of drinking a bottle of whiskey with KB while we watched the first season of The OC. And I think about smacking Earl around...not that this actually happened, but for some reason, this beautiful, sad song makes me want to hit him. And, it reminds me of sitting outside the Houghton offices with a People magazine, my mp3 player, and my cigarettes, wasting time at work. Which, obviously, is nothing new for me.

14 November 2006:

Guards!

A few days ago, the tragic amount of rent I sign away to Realty and Mortgage Co. every month proved worth it in the form of the five men who sit downstairs in the lobby.

I didn't actually think it would work, but when I mentioned to one of my doormen that I would like to make sure that a certain gentleman was not allowed access to the sixth floor until the rivers boiled and turned to blood, he sprang into action, posting signs with the offending man's name and description and assuring me that I would never have to deal with him again.

Each successive doorman, as their shifts came up, verified that the note was correct. Rather than asking details (as we know would have been the first thing to pop out of my mouth), the assumed superhero, arms-across-shoulders stance (OK, only in my mind, but it's a better visual), and said "No problem. He's barred."

If only these guys had been hanging out in my lobby in Boston, the whole weird peeping masturbator story might not have ended with me clutching my little stuffed chicken and running into a waiting cab where my friend and two roommates were stuffed into the back at 2 in the morning.

I love my doormen. Yay for being able to take the coward's way out and having five menacing men (except for Jason--he's too goofy to be menacing) do my dirty work for me!

15 November 2006:

Lip gloss

I don't know why this needs sharing, but it does.

I used to never wear lip gloss. It made the butts of my cigarettes ridiculously difficult to get a grip on, my hair was constantly getting stuck in it regardless of whether the wind was blowing, and it required too much mainetnance--touch ups, breadcrumb removal, whatever.

I've taken to wearing it more recently, especially since the cigarette butt part (um, for the most part) no longer comes into play, and I've learned how to clip my hair up like a big girl when I'm going to be walking around.

Today is a lip gloss day, as you might have guessed. And I just went and touched it up, just like I'm supposed to. And about 100 seconds ago, I was tossing tic tacs into my mouth, when they both landed on my lip and stuck! I was kind of freaked out to have candy hanging on to my lip, but glad they didn't fall, because then I would have been sad (I already had a Jell-O-related mishap today, so losing one more sweet thing to the forces of gravity would have been too much to bear for a single afternoon).

So thank you, lip gloss, for saving my mints AND giving me a dumb story to tell.

17 November 2006:

Saturday night.

Last night, my brother called me to check in, or so he says. But, since he's a Gehl, I knew he was up to something. Gehls check in on Sundays. Any weekday call has a motivation behind it. All you could do was hope it was a good one (Hey, can I give you $500? So, I was wondering if you'd like to take this car off my hands?) as opposed to a bad one (How do you feel about powerwashing outdoor ceiling fans? Would you mind editing my colleague's 15-year-old daughter's bodice ripper?)

During the course of the conversation, he asked me if I knew Dr. So-and-so. My mind immediately pinged over toward the "good" side of the motivational barometer as I called to mind the the comment Jim once made that he was going to set me up with a school friend of his until his wife told him not to (um, Jim's wife, not the friend's wife, of course).

I told Jim that no, I'd never met Dr. So-and-so, and he said that he was someone Jim's been doing research with--a nice guy, young, single, all this stuff.

(Nice....)

And then he says, Well, he's throwing a party in a few weeks.

(I think, Excellent...)

Jim continued, and I'm definitely going, because I'm I'm applying for residency programs, I should make the effort, so I was thinking that it might be fun...

(Yessss???)

For you to babysit.

(Oh.)

And if you want, maybe you should just bring an overnight bag. I've heard that Dr. So-and-so throws a good party, so I don't know when we'll be home.

(Awesome.)

19 November 2006:

Almost as bad as asking me to hold my hands above my head for an undetermined length of time

I do not do well with crowds, which makes my choice of neighborhood particularly stupid for at least two months of every year.

Poor Kate had to put up with me yesterday while we attempted to go shopping while the rest of the people in downtown Chicago were doing idiotic things like standing in front of escalators and revolving doors, walking 8-abreast down sidewalks, and stopping to plan out their shopping routes in the middles of express pedestrian walkways (defined as any spare inch of space that a person can force themselves into in order to pass by and cut off at least two people on the way to the revolving door or escalator).

So first, a big thanks to Kate for keeping her thoughts about my ridiculous and completely unwarranted bitchiness to herself and giving me time to cool off and recover my usual, charming personality, and also, for not taking me up on my offer to "shoot me now" on any one of the thrity or so times I started twitching and moaning as we fought our way through the State Street crowds.

We got our shopping done (Shuffle for Kate, baking sheets for me) and were approaching the home stretch when I stupidly decided to cross the street WITH the green light.

OK, in all fairness, I saw that stupid, big, shiny BMW being driven with a man who had blown dry his hair that morning trying to beat the light. But there was no way he was making it. By the time he was into the turn, there were 500 other people walking across Erie, because the little man on the crosswalk sign was telling them that it was their chance. Still, it was a perfectly calculated maneuver on my part to walk on the outside, closest to the car, and shoot him a bitchy look for trying to inch in on the pedestrian right of way.

But I didn't expect him to hit me. Seriously. I didn't think he had those kinds of balls (he was, after all, driving a big expensive shiny car).

But he did. He had those kinds of balls, and the stupid fucker actually hit me!

I wish now that it had occurred to me to hop on his hood (the hood of his car--that's not a euphamism). But it didn't. Instead. I stood in the intersection, staring him down and trying to think if I was carrying anything that I could throw at his windsheild. (Fortunately for him, my new, very heavy baking sheets were just expensive enough that I didn't want to sacrifice them in the name of vandalism.) So I just glared, and he glared back, and I gave his fender a kick and walked away, feeling very unsatisfied with the turn out.

A woman on the other side of the walk saw this interaction, and was dying laughing. At least I gave her a story to tell her husband over dinner, I guess.

Oddly, though, it was a fantastic day. Got a good shopping story, and some baking sheets. Then Kate and I got all poshed up and went to the symphony, where we counted bald heads and picked out the most fuckable cello players (actually, player; there was only one contender). And then, we went for drinks and I took pictures of my shoes. Good times. Trust me: they're cute shoes.

6 December 2006:

I need the one to counteract the other.

Back when I was working on the other side of the floor (NEVER, by the way, have two months gone more slowly or been more overwhelming--and I mean that in the worst possible way), coworkers brought in food to share weekly. Sour cream cake, Belgain chocolate, banana-caramel bread. It was awesome. Or, I'm assuming it was awesome. Because, you see, the shelves on which the food was placed were right next to cubicle of this tremendously fit, good looking, pretentious...asshole, I guess, would be the word I'm looking for. For as much as I didn't like him (and his stupid D&G jeans that he wore every damn day and his ridiculously nice shoes and his carefully crafted hair), I'd be damned if I was going to let him see me grab a piece of cake for breakfast once a week. I swear, I'd get within two feet of him and the phrase "fatty fatty two-by-four" would just spring into my head out of nowhere--which is weird, because (a) who even SAYS that and (b) I'm generally not like that--I'm annoyingly the opposite, even.

Over in books, we're a lot less eating-junk-food-focused, which is odd, because we are, by and large, a far dumpier crew. The journals staff, by comparison, are a bunch of fucking models. But now that it's the holidays, the gloves are off, and the food is pouring in. And over here, it goes on the library table. This is no good for several reasons. The library is 3 feet outside my door. The closest office to the library is occupied by a man who is roughly as wide as he is tall and has more hair on his neck than on his head. And worst of all--there's not hot, fit, asshole anywhere in sight to keep me from grabbing all the cookies I can shove into my belly.

So cheers! I guess I'll just have to get word out to my family that any holiday clothing purchases should just be exchanged now for a size bigger. Eh, shit happens!

7 December 2006:

Ten Things...

RULES: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose 10 people to be tagged and list their names.

NOTE: I'm not tagging anyone, because that's just silly. I will, however, be looking after your blogs, because the only things I love more than new scoop are forms and questionnaires, so I look forward to reading yours.

1. There is a freckle on the fourth toe of my left foot. Her name is Sue.

2. I luuuuuurve getting into bed with socks, and then kicking them off and making my feet cold, then rubbing my feet together to make them warm again. During the winter, I do this on a nightly basis.

3. When I was a little girl--maybe 5 or 6--my brothers cornered me in the basement and wouldn't let me go until I named a favorite. I picked my oldest brother, and my middle brother started to cry. To this day, I can picture his face, and it breaks my heart and even now I wish I could take it back.

4. I couldn't spell my middle name until I was 6, and it's not even anything cool, like Siobhan. It's Frances.

5. Sometimes, I still think I'm partly responsible for a coteacher's suicide.

6. If people knew how violent my average daydream was, they might choose to walk on the other side of the street. I like to think I'm badass, but in reality, when confronted with any crisis (strange men climbing up my window, mom passing out and choking on gum, what have you), I immediately crumble. I have no strength.

7. I can never think of anything to say to my dad. If my mom isn't on the phone extension, our conversations won't last longer than 5 minutes.

8. I once let a guy make an eat a sundae off my chest in the middle of the Kentucky Derby.

9. When I can't sleep, I practice the art of hair removal. On nights when it's really bad, I can keep myself entertained for hours, by restricting myself to tweezers. Once, I spent four hours tweezing my legs.

10. I have lived alone for seven years, which is ridiculous, because I hate being alone. I used to make my friends stop by on their way home from work at 11pm and stay up specially just so I could not be alone for an hour. But I'm a horrible roommate, so there you have it.

Oh my god, I'm out of space! Is that already 10 things? OK, here are some more.

11. More than anything, I want a tattoo of William Shakespeare's signature, but I don't feel like I deserve it because I can't quote any of his sonnets and I'm not a scholar.

12. Someday, when I become a fabulous Murakami-style novelist with a big fat advance, my first order of business will be to take my entire family to Hiroshima. Not because I want them all to get radiation poisoning or anything, but because that's where I want to celebrate, and it's a fabulous city, and after years of being supported by everyone else, the trip would finally be on me.

13. I spent two years in college convinced that I becoming schizophrenic. Or a lesbian. Or possibly both.

I think I'm done sharing now. Now it's your turn...

10 December 2006:

This is why I spend Fridays in.

My doorman and I decorated marshmallow snowmen on Friday night. This is what happens when you go to Walgreens for garbage bags at 11:30pm. I can't be trusted. On the plus side, the kit was only a dollar, and Jason assured me that they tasted delicious in his chai when all was said and done.

11 December 2006:

Sometimes it takes me a long time to realize the flaws in my logic.

I was messing around with my photos today and I stopped to smile at the one of me on the merry-go-round. Second to the swings, it's my favorite piece of playground equipment (see-saws, which were far too rare even back in the day, were my number three, and monkey bars, being the reason I bit through my lip on the way to my resting place in a pile of gravel don't make the top 10).

I love this particular merry-go-round because it's where I spent the better part of one week every summer until I was 10 or so, and I was so proud that I got that picture to work, what with all the running, jumping, and spinning.

Read that again: with all the running, jumping, and spinning. Yes, my friends. I positioned my camera, put it on a 10-second timer, then booked it like hell across the playground, ran with the merry-go-round, and tried to time the shot so I'd be not-completely ass-front when the timer went off.

It took me about seven takes. ...And then it took me another 1 1/2 years to realize: shit. This is photography. I didn't actually have to be moving--let alone panting and sweating--to get that shot. Fuck.

In other news, there isn't any. Which is why I'm writing about merry-go-rounds from my childhood. I had entertained the thought of posting an old journal entry or two just to prove that I've always been as boring yet oddly long winded as I am now. I have on hand five different journals at various stages of completeness, and that's to say nothing of what I left under my bed in Little Rock. So I got my oldest journal out and opened it...started laughing at the really shocking poetry and pronoucements found within, and decided I was too embarrassed to post anything.

Maybe tomorrow I'll take you guys along on a choose your own adventure. I'll type up the story and you guys can tell me what to do. I'll warn you, though: if you kill me after three posts, I'm going to rescind my Christmas card love and stop talking to you.

13 December 2006:

A Commercial Break.

Kate and I, as is wont to happen, were on the same page...almost. Only I thought it would have been a good gag and she thought it would have been a good course of action.

So, if I can count on participation...and then, if I can come up with a good starting point, I'll let you guys direct my post-work activities for a week. I'm not online dating right now and I don't have anyone remotely interesting lined up, with the exception of the Turkish Professor, so I can't promise that I'll be anywhere near as entertaining as Encyclopedia Brown, Ricardo, Lisa, and the gang, but I'll give it a shot.

But it will only work if you order me around: I'm counting on it.

14 December 2006:

No ghosts of Cival War generals or chimpanzee holograms...

...How can I live up to such frightening and exciting expectations?

We'll find out, starting tomorrow.
I'm going to have to start slowly, because all the creativity has seeped from my brain. I expect that if I looked, I'd find it smothered within the pages of the book that I'm working on--that is on my last nerve.

So here's the deal: I'm not going to go out of my way to do anything crazy (see, isn't this fun already?) because my normal life just isn't that fraught with activity. For example: I'm going to go home tonight, take all the stickers off my new dishes, wash said dishes, and do some freelance proofreading. Wheeee! But I'm hoping, with your prodding and my last minute flashes of inspiration, that there will be moments that make a good story.

I already know how tomorrow morning is going to go, because this is how it always goes:
I'll wake up at 7:15 in time to hear my neighbor storming down the hall. Presumably, she was pounding on my door to wake me up, but I won't know, because I usually gain consciousness about the time I hear her door slam. I stumble through the mess of clothes, magazines, and DVDs on my floor to reset my alarm, finally waking up at 8:40, screaming "SHIT!" and running for the 9:30 train.

Here are a few choices for you, campers:

(A) Do I wear jeans tomorrow--making it the fifth day in a row, or
(B) Do I glam up for Friday? Let me know how to dress--don't be afraid to be specific. And I'll provide photographic evidence of me in my office in the outfit of your choosing.

Now let's get crazy:

(C) Metra to work, or
(D) Bus?

God, could my life be any more on edge? I'll be back tomorrow to give you some choices about my weekend. ...If I make it that long. I'm beginning to think that this experiment is going to make me take a long, hard look at my life which will, in turn, make me dizzy with the monotony of it all. But as long as you can stand to have it inflicted on you, well hell, I can help you out with that.

15 December 2006:

Day One of Limited Free Will

I'm not going to be terribly prosalicious, but it's been a long day. I'm here to quickly report on day one of the CYOA experiment--I wore a dress, and everyone asked me if I had plans after work. I had never realized that apparently I go through office life looking like a schlub. Not too surprising though.

So I'm going to dash this off, on the rare chance that someone out there is also home on a Friday evening and will care to comment. Here are some choices for the weekend. And I promise I'll come back tomorrow and pretty up my commentary--and I'll do it before I have a pitcher of beer, which is the current problem.

Tomorrow I'm going to the stylist. Unfortunately for you (and lucky for me), I've had a sleepless night or two, so I don't have to ask you about waxing, as I've taken care of everything myself. BUT---

(A) I leave it to you--cut my hair, or
(B) Just get a trim?

Next on the agenda for the weekend: a Saturday night party. I'm going to have to walk in alone and fake the confidence that I always lack. I'm always 2 seconds away from backing out of parties, so do I

(C) Glam it up, and walk in with style, or
(D) Stay home and drink whiskey and write?

And if I go...

(E) Do I take a bottle of black label scotch or
(F) A cheap bottle of wine?

Last but not least, here's something I've been toying with...

(G) Do I go for my second tattoo (and I'll only tell you what it is after its gotten--you get no say in what gets permanently inked to my body) or
(H) Do I sleep off the alcohol and remain relatively tattoo-free?

I'll be back tomorrow...comment if you're around and care to do so!

16 December 2006:

Day Two of Limited Free Will

I culled the comments of those who called, e-mailed, wrote in, or comisserated over drinks, and here's what I came up with:

Part of it was based on people who commented first getting more weight, and part of it was based on things that I could never hope to pull off (Mel, if I had your style, I totally could have rocked box wine and everyone would have laughed at my wit, but me being me, they would have just been laughing at me) and part of it was based on other people's schedules.

So here are the results, as of 6pm, with the party still to go:

I went to my hairdresser's this morning, and she didn't have time to color anything, which is good because my mom would have been so upset, especially since Christmas is such a fucking photo-op. Every time I color my hair, I'm subjected to the story (which I secretly love, but don't tell) about how my hair color is exactly the same as her mother's, whom I never met.

So instead, I chopped it off. I'm stuck somewhere between Old High School Mary and Hot Mom--I'm still getting used to it, I guess.

In this ridiculously blurry photo, you can see me sporting my new bob...

If I look a little leery above, it's because I met Kate for shopping (necessary for glamming up for the party, which was unanimous across the board) and then we got on a bus to go get the tattoo--also unanimous. I didn't really plan to get it today, but then I decided that I'd prefer to have the same woman tattoo me the second time around while it was still light outside, as opposed to have to trudge out there after work, by myself, and drop my pants for a stranger. You understand.

Bravo to Kate, for putting up with an hour and forty-five minutes on a bus so that she could spend 12 minutes at Jade Dragon with me, staring in embarrassment at the ceiling while the tattoo artist talked about Leos and their crazy manes of hair and how most women have ugly vaginas. Once the twelve minutes were up, I walked away with this:

Can't tell what it is? Sweet! Neither can I. This might help:

Still no? It's William Shakespeare's signature. Well, one of six. Or so they say. Really, in all likelihood, it's the signature of some law clerk or other who was signing the bard's name. But whatever. I'm officially stamped. Kate made the excellent observation that I'm quickly becoming a piece of luggage. Every country I visit, I walk away (eventually) with a commemorative tattoo.

So now, I have to go wash my short short hair, put on a short short skirt, and pretend to have fun at a party for a short short time. I'm going to bow to Tony and Heidi on this one and take the Scotch: I will buy the affection of men with nice liquor. I'm not ashamed. Well, once I'm drunk I won't be.

17 December 2006:

Day Three--Resting on Sunday

Well, as it happens, the short short skirt looked appalling, and the shirt that I bought did strange and Dolly-ish things to my chest (I mean that in the worst possible way), so I took the soccer mom hair to the fullest possible extent and took myself off to Emily's. I actually did pretty well: it only took me about 17 minutes of walking up and down the street to find the party. (I MUST start writing addresses down--and remembering to take the scrap of paper. That part is key.) But, whereas I normally would have given up of ten minutes of trouping around, I stuck it out, and in the end, was very glad I did so.

People were glad to see the Scotch, and I was successful in making myself believe that their happiness was also at least a little bit for me. I count the evening as a success just for walking in the front door, and as an overwhelming success for being a good time. I love bonus points.

Today I'm taking a break. After the business, pain, and drinking of yesterday, I convinced myself that I deserved to sleep in and do a whole lot of nothing. Well, a whole lot of staring in the mirror at my new tattoo, which is really what I'm doing. I can't help it. I'm so amused by it.

As for tomorrow: I am, once again, out of ideas. It seems I should have spaced the weekend activities. Sadly, I'm expecting a big proofreading project to land on my desk, which may rule out some of the remaining evenings of this adventure, but I'll do what I can.

In the meantime, I'll try to come up with something to ask regarding tomorrow, and if anyone out there is feeling clever, just shout it out...

Day Four: What to do?

OK, here's something to mull over...all regarding guys.

(A) Do I call Ruben?
(B) Do I re-email the Turkish Professor?
(C) Do I do neither and retain my dignity?

Several years ago--I think I still lived in Little Rock, even--I bought these cards because they were the funniest things I'd ever read. They're a little too ballsy for me (basically, they read "you're amazing. i totally want to fuck you." but much more eloquently)--I thought they'd be funny to send to some guy some day, but my courage and the guy never materialized, so I still have them in a drawer. They have moved with me to Kentucky (where I moved twice), then to Boston, and now to Chicago. So now for the question:

(D) Do I send them out?
(E) Or do I sit on them?

And if I send them out...

(G) Who should I send them to? There are two cards, and therefore two chances to humiliate me. What fun!

This company needs to reconfigure its marketing department.

Because if this is the best that said marketing department can come up with, then this company is in serious trouble. I mean, honestly. Would you buy this? I'm not particularly desirous of having fuller lips, for a start, but if I were, I can't imagine that the imagery on this box would do it for me. They might was well just print their "results sadly typical" disclaimer and say something to the effect of "you'd acheive more, better, and faster results with a fish face (shown above)."

This poor model. I bet her cheeks hurt for weeks after having to hold the pose for the box shoot. It looks like she got all her tips from Pepe LePew.

So unless this product is strictly for sale next to sweatshirts and mugs at the Warner Bros.-owned Great America theme parks across the country, this needs to be redone.

That being said, let's CYOA it: should I trot on back to Walgreens and pick some up? I'll supply you with before and after photos. Or should I make fun of it and move on with my life?

The Lip Plumpy results are in. Film at Eleven.

I ran back out to Walgreens and had to do a lap around cosmetics before some cute guy looking at the acne treatments left...I was far too embarrassed to let him see me picking up lip plumper. With the coast clear, I swung back by and realized that the product was 30 bucks. What the fuck? Pamela Anderson's version was slightly better, at 22, but in the end, I had to settle for Skin Essentials (TM) Lip Enhancer with advanced Hyaluronic Filling Spheres (Registered). At a mere 10 dollars, it was a steal. (I'll apologize here for the poor photo quality that follows: my camera is stuck on landscape, no flash mode.)

[photo mia]

I brought it home, brushed the dust off the top of the package, and got to work. Here are my sad, thin lips.

[photo mia]

Here's what I think that one product would have made me do.

[photo mia]

And here are the results of Lip Enhancer, which, true to its (kind of off-putting) word, neither burned nor stung. It tingled, in a vanilla-y, coconutty way. It smells a bit like suntan lotion and it feels like I have hair gel smeared on my lips. Now lets get down to the looks:

Oh! Look at how happy Skin Essentials Lip Enhancer has made me!

[photo mia]

Oooh, how sultry!

[photo mia]

And, for fairness, a droopy cig-by-cig comparison:

[photo mia]

The results:
It was well worth the 10 dollars, if only so that I saved Tony from having to experience yucky jelly cigarette butt syndrome. Plus, it made my doorman laugh. But in the future, I think that I'll stick to biting my lips to puff them up. And if I miss the sensation of Lip Enhancer, I'll lick some Hawaiian Tropic (editorial note: I originally put Banana Boat, and really grossed myself out).

18 December 2006:

Day Four: Choices A-G have been nixed.

Kate wrote in to save me from myself by suggesting that, instead of embarrassing myself in front of a bunch of guys who already know me, I should do so in front of a bunch of complete strangers. Yesssss!

I have charged her with posting an ad on Craigslist for me, but she wants your opinions and suggestions. You've all heard enough of my stories/have plenty of your own, so you know what needs to be done.

Comment at will, and I'll pass the info on to Kate! Or, you can cut through the middleman and comment on her page. I'm sure she'd be giddy with delight.

20 December 2006:

The CYOA Wrap Up

Well, it was certainly a week. ...Overall, despite the fact that Encyclopedia Brown bit it twice in as many days, I'd have to say that the book version was more successful--and more entertaining--for all involved.

I don't know if Kate will ever forgive me for making her sit on a bus for nearly 2 hours with the prize at the end being a lovely view of some ceiling tiles at the tattoo parlor. I have a theory that retribution was behind her idea for the Craigslist posting. Lucky for me, she got distracted by the convergence of work and Christmas, and I'm off the hook, because the week is officially over.

To recap, here are things I've done in the last 144 hours that I would otherwise not have done.

(1) I wore a skirt to work on Friday. It elicited so many comments that I thought about a repeat performance on Monday, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I've been back in jeans ever since that fateful day.

(2) I cut my hair in a chin-length bob, which I really only notice now when I go to yank my hair in frustration when I'm at work (this occurrs about once every 72 minutes, so it's a bigger change than you might realize).

(3) I got a new tattoo. Much like my first one, I can't see it without looking in the mirror, so it's very easy to forget that it's there.

(4) I tried to plump up my lips using a $10 gloss. I was shocked when it didn't work. Shocked.

(5) I marched into a CVS and skulked around the back until a male cashier was available, at which point I walked up to him with my Massengil and trilled "gotta stay fresh!" I will never be going into that CVS again, by the way.

And that's gotta be it. Regular life sort of took precedence by Sunday evening, and editing isn't very prone to adventure, so that's the end of that.

Thanks to everyone who played along. I'm now colder, poorer, more scarred, and more embarrassed. I love you, too.